Because it makes your content relevant to me.
Fans
If you can make your message about your audience, your market, your customers – however you care to describe the target of your communications, then you have a greater chance of building fans.
Fans enjoy feeling like they are collaborators with you. They enjoy feeling that they have something in common with you. This is what makes them friends at a distance.
Social media is platform that is closing the distance between you and your fans.
Here's How it Works
If I give you information that is valuable, you will appreciate it, but possibly never use it. If I help you appreciate the value of that information by showing you how it works for me or someone like you, then the context makes it invaluable.
However, no matter how many pragmatic examples I give you, they don't matter unless I can relate them to you. And that means I have to understand you.
Social media is a collaborative platform that is helping people to better work together.
Getting Closer
We all identify with what we know. Local context shapes our lives. We have a tendency to seek what we know based upon where we live – or have lived. If your local context is like mine, then it is likely we will feel comfortable working together.
Social media can help you get closer with your client or customer to understand more about how they live – or want to.
Being Relevant
How do you make your blogging or other marketing communications relevant? You show your audience you understand them.
My audience happens to be entrepreneurs and small businesses like you – people that work hard because you care about serving your customers well. I try to work just as hard as you do to earn your trust.
Social media gives your customers subtle clues about why you are relevant to them.
Customer Context
Show your customers you understand them – that you understand their context. I was a marketer in a corporate environment for ten years. Yet, I always felt like a bystander. The context seemed designed to keep a distance between us and our customers.
As a small business owner for over twenty years, I learned that there are others like me that are willing to put their heart and soul into their work. That I understand, and that adds a great deal of context to the work we do, regardless of how different it may be.
Bill Gates said content is king, and he's right, as long as the context is relevant.
The more I use social media to accomplish more with my customers, the more I realize its true value is to close gaps, build bonds, and communicate information more effectively, even though there may be physical distance between us.
Social media is more than a medium, its an environment that makes the work of serving customers more human.
Photo Credit: C.P. Storm
That was a very good article. Nice read and put i simple terms.
Well done
Andrew – Appreciate your feedback. Have a great day!
Jeff