Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to DevelopYour Business Online

Chapter 78. How to Reach and Influence Prospects

We talk about how social media like blogs and podcasts and social networks will help us grow our business, yet we are hampered in several ways. Some of our customers won't provide testimonials. Others will take a while to actually execute a project. Still others have stumbled onto your site, and it's up to you to keep them. Let's talk about these prospects first.

WHO ARE YOUR PROSPECTS?

There are, of course, tons of ways to think about who your potential customers might be. David Meerman Scott^[250] talks often about buyer personas as a way to better understand those you're hoping to reach. In my examples that follow, I've picked only three types of prospective new customers. You have many other people interacting with your media, and it's up to you to balance your efforts such that they align with the relationships you need.

Here are three prospect examples.

Private Customer

In the example cited here,^[251] GirlPie's customers don't really want to refer her. This means she has a private customer. You could say that SEO and search marketing professionals often have private customers as well. In these cases, your audience doesn't want to tout your skills, because they don't want to admit their prior weakness, or they may have other reasons to stay quiet.

Newcomer Customer

Some of us have customers from larger companies who are very new. They've been tasked with adopting an online strategy, or a social media marketing plan, or something like ...