Looking at my blog I was in shock as to how long it has been since I have written anything of substance, so I decided to start a series the A toZ of Social Media #A2ZofSoMe. I’d like to say I will get an article up once a week, but I don’t know if that is realistic, so let’s just see how it goes.

You know it’s funny when you focus on a letter, there seems to be so many ways to tie in social media to that letter, I’m guessing I will also be tweeting some of the thoughts that did not make it to the blog, under the HashTag #A2ZofSoMe so that they are easy to spot. Feel free to join me in conversation and make this truly social.

A is for Audience, you thought I was going to say Apple or Android didn’t you? Well in putting together these articles with the ever changing landscape of technology and social media, I am hoping to focus on concepts that will be timeless, or at least have a longer shelf life then any one product, so let’s go with audience. So many launch in to social media spending money and time without first knowing where their target audience is hanging out or what they want from the brand. A few years ago I met with a software company looking to reach out to programmers, and they felt they needed to learn Facebook and Twitter to do so, well guess what? That’s not where their audience was spending time, we helped them locate their audience and found that they were mostly in forums and they were having conversations about that company’s products, and the company was not involved in those conversation.

No matter your budget, there is no excuse for not taking some time to figure out where your target audience is talking, if you don’t, it is like showing up to a college campus and talking retirement, you’re just not going to make much impact, that audience is not thinking about your product. If you are not paying attention to people talking about you, your brand or your market you are missing opportunities. Imagine going to a networking event and; someone who loves you is touting how good you are; someone who had a bad experience is telling everyone; someone is in the market for your product and asking questions, If you are not paying attention, it is like ignoring that person, how do you think it makes them feel. Customers expect you to be listening and to respond, this is a point that many Brands miss.

When asked how quickly they expect companies to respond to a question or complaint on Facebook and Twitter:
• Across regions, 81% of Twitter users expect a same-day response to questions and complaints posted at the newsfeed
• 30% of Twitter users expect a response within 30 minutes, 22% expect a response within two hours and 29% expect a same-day response
• 29% of consumers on Facebook expect a response within two hours when they post a question at a company’s page and 22% expect a same-day response
Consumer Views of Live Help Online 2012: A Global Perspective, ORCALE 2012

Listen to your audience, where they are talking. Understand how they talk and how they want to be talked to. Engage them on their terms, it’s about them and their experience with your brand, not you.

Part of what we do here at Head of Lettuce Media is research, and we have discovered some amazing things by design and by mistake, enter _Zombie_hobo_ one of our theoretical accounts (now I’ll be honest, I was just in a punchy mood when I gave birth to the Zombie Hobo) In the beginning the account only tweeted 5 tweets, rotating and repeating them.

I use CrowdBooster for this chart

The account targets and follows those talking about zombies (note: the zombie hobo does not auto dm or talk to anyone, until they address it, this means if you ignore it, it will go away.) The account does respond if you talk to it with one of 4 replies, and in the beginning I was just looking to see what kind of Klout a Zombie could get (yeah I know, Drink! #KLOUTdrinkinggame) . What I did not account for was the sheer entertainment factor of the account. The account, targeted an audience that found value in zombies. The moral of the story is Don’t discount the value of giving your audience what they are looking for weather it be entertainment, useful information or answers to their questions. We have experimented with several Autonomous accounts and the results are always the same, success. The key to any successful account in building audience is to tell people what you are there to talk about, then stick to it. Two other examples are @Shat_Bot and @TheMorpheusBot both of these accounts tell people in their profiles what they talk about, and people choose to follow them based on that simple premiss.

There is a big misconception that size matters when it comes to your audience, it helps, but don’t be distracted chasing the big numbers. I recently worked with a company that made the mistake of paying someone for more followers, here is what I found, keep in mind this is a company targeting people in the US.

Note: I used SocialBro for this simple analysis of where the followers were located.

taking it even further, of the followers that these guys paid for, only 10% are considered good accounts by http://fakers.statuspeople.com/

If you are not sure about how to identify or find your audience, contact us at Head of Lettuce Media, we can teach you to do it yourself, or do it for you.