The Carpenter sees a nail

I recently Tweeted that I realized I was the “carpenter that sees everything as a nail”. This was a saving revelation.

You see, I was about to develop a Post covering the first of the five critical stages of a successful Social Media program. The five stages, as we define them at OLinks, are “Setup, Post, Promote, Participate, Measure”. In diving into the first step, I almost made the mistake that everyone Blogs for business development. That is our focus here at OLinks. But it is not the only Blog perspective.

Acceptable Mores

Since I am in the Blogosphere all day, I, of course, know that not everyone is blogging for business purposes. Many are promoting their perspective on politics or the serendipitous events in their life. I love to read them all.

So, when a Blogger sets up their program to get their message out, they will use different techniques. They may even find that they are using a different set of mores. That is to say, what is acceptable may be different depending on the audience and focus.

An example may be a person that is wanting to convey experiences as a parent, the good and the bad, the successes and the mistakes. The audience of this blogger may find the act of a single blog subject auto-posted to the blogger’s twitter account as an act of apathy. So auto-posting would be a violation of what is acceptable in this case.

Be There for Them

However, a golden rule of a blogger providing education on a subject relevant to a specific industry should be to promote the message to where the recipient resides. Market Segmentation is as important in this new paradigm of education-marketing methodology as it was in the previous paradigm of interrupt-marketing (commercials, pop-ups, etc.)

It has been said, “don’t out compete your competition, out teach your competition” This is the new paradigm. Providing valuable information for your market segment that is ‘discovered’. That is when you are truly reaching “those that have ears”.

Let’s take a  business-to-consumer company reaching out to their market segment. It is critical that this company be where the consumer resides. Some live on Twitter, some on Facebook, some in the Blogosphere, or just searching around the Web. Auto-post is not only acceptable in this case, it is imperative.

The Clear Objective of Business Social Media

The objective is clear for a business focused Social Media Program. You must be making your engaging message available to the reader on the Social Network where the reader resides. You must then ensure the reader is able to move from that initial Social Network to secondary Social Networks, and also Bookmarking sites and subscription services.

In the old days, the Web was described as being ubiquitous (existing everywhere at the sametime). Now, we must think from the perspective of our content. Our message must be ubiquitous.

Business is What We Know

The Social Media Program for business is just one of several segments in the Blogosphere. This is the one we know about at OLinks, and post about. We try to not look at everything as a nail, like a carpenter does. But sometimes we do. Forgive us when this happens.