SOCIAL MEDIA AND NICHE MARKETING

The terms “Social Network Sites” (SNS) or “Social Media” encompass a wide range of facilities. There are blogs, forums & message boards, social networking sites, social media news sites, bookmarking sites, video & photo hosting sites, podcast sites, answer service sites, and I’m sure there are many more. All of these have a place in the mix of social media you use for recruiting members of your niche. I want to tell you about two different types of sites and a tactic to use with them for building your niche. One of these two types is Forums & Message Boards and the other is Social Networking. They are different from each other stylistically, but the tactics for building your niche while working within them is basically the same. They both offer the facility for members to carry on conversations with each other using a structured format. These conversations are maintained by the site for others to watch and review over time. Forums & Message Boards The overall purpose of this category of SNS is to facilitate the creation and management of related messages. People join forums and message boards to facilitate communication with each other. They chose the forum based on some niche and they gravitate to conversations which are interesting for themselves. The forum software maintains the communication in “threads” and people maintain communication with each other based on how well they want to connect to a particular thread. They can easily start new threads so that new topics can surface on the forum. You can find a forum or message board in your niche by doing a Google or Yahoo search for your niche keywords and add “forum” or “message board.” Market Niches A Common Focus A market niche is a group of people who are interested in a particular context or a particular set of content. They may have studied it. They may have worked in it. They may have been born into it. They may have lived in it. It may be their hobby. For whatever reason, they are interested in that particular thing or situation. A Common Identifier Another characteristic of a market niche is that they identify themselves based on certain things. In the Internet Marketing world we usually think about this as the keywords which they use in searches and lookups for others in their niche and for products and services related to there are of interest. A Common Location For most market niches, you can find the people in that niche in specific locations. For all practical purposes, the people in a specific market niche want to be with, interact with, and work with others in their niche. In some cases, to pursue their interest, they have to be in a specific location. So, they congregate in common locations. When you find those locations, you can find a way to get your message, your story, in front of them at those locations. For instance, maybe your market niche is people who live in suburban areas. In this case, you can get your message in front of them with commuter train advertising or highway billboards. Of, if they are urban dwellers, you can get your message in front of them with advertising on buses. The key is to find our where your niche hast to congregate and then, put your message there. Internet Marketing Niche In the case of Internet Marketing, you need to use those identifiers (those keywords) they use to attract your market to your message. You can do this in a variety of ways, but in this ebook we are going to focus on the use of certain social media as the locations to attract your market niche Know Your Niche Of course, for this to work you need to be clear about what you niche is and what it is not. In most cases, there are larger categories in which your niche fits which can be narrowed down to find those who are in your specific niche. If your niche is embroidery it can fit within needlework, but probably not under knitting or crochet. So, if you look on a needlework site, you can probably find embroidery, knitting, and crochet. But, if you look on knitting or crochet sites, you will probably not find embroidery. You need to know exactly where and what your niche is to be able to find those in your niche. Using “Niche” I’m using the term, “Niche” to refer to the marketing niche and also to refer to the members of that niche. So, when I use this term, I’m talking about the common interest, identifier, location, and the people who share those common things.