One of the questions I get all the time is: “What should we blog/tweet/video/facebook about?”  My response: Don’t talk about shoes.

When starting any campaign, don’t think about what products you can promote.  Think about your target audiences.  That may be business-decision makers or developers or shoe shoppers.  Who geeks out about your product? And what are they geeking out about?

My number one example lately for effective use of social media to connect with your target audience has been Zappos.  For those not familiar with Zappos, they are an online shoe retailer.  A dime a dozen, you say? Not so with Zappos.  They know the number one thing about sales: It’s all about a personal connection with your buyer.

How Zappos Uses Blogging To Reach Buyers

Zappos has tweleve blogs.  One CEO and COO blog.  Ten Consumer Interest Blogs. Check it:

Looks like Zappos has broken their audience down into Parents, Health Enthusiasts, Fashion Divas, Runners, Outdoorsy Types and Extreme Sporters (Surfers, Skaters, Snowboarders, etc.).  Each audience has a team of content creators writing about topics that pique the interests of these folks.  This army of mini-lifestyle bloggers are writing about things like:

And yes, they do occasionally blog about shoes–but more like the history of shoes, choosing comfortable shoes–not product-focused posts like “We have XXX now in stock” or “70 % Off Running Shoes.”

So how can you apply this to routers, processors, endpoint security or enterprise solutions and still stay glamorous? You don’t.  To be sexy, you have to stay true to your customers.

How to Create Compelling Content That Appeals to Your Audience:

• Listen
  • See what your target audience is saying: Where they are hanging out? What are they talking about? How are they saying it?
  • Bonus points if you actually survey your customers and audiences
• Check out your resources.  You may need to do some hiring.
  • Is there anyone on staff that can blog about certain topics? Are there developers already blogging? Any that might be interested?  Maybe it would be effective to hire a couple of content creators.  Juggle the budgets–steal from advertising
• Get ready to rock
  • What’d you learn during the listening phase? Incorporate that.
  • What stories can you tell? What conversations can you have? GEEK IT UP!!
  • Run out of ideas? What do *you* love about the product?
• Write compelling content. Just Effing Do it!
• Get involved.
  • Yup, you have to get these content creators to comment on other blogs with similar topics.
  • Not sure where to go? Check out alltop.com for a directory of ALL the TOP blogs. (Zappos gets dinged for this one!)

Results:

• Increased connection with your customer base
• Increase awareness of your product
• You increase your SEO and help customers follow the *ahem* tracks back to you

So what’s stopping you? Ask yourself: How can we sell shoes without talking about shoes? Create compelling content and conversations to pique the curiosity of your key customers!

What do you do to better reach your target audiences? Let us know in the comments!

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[The above photo, "I heart my red shoes even tho I never wear them" by lis rock on Flickr, used under Creative Commons] by  on flickr

Related posts:

1. “Breadcrumbs: Using Curiosity to Strategically Reach Audiences”
2. “And…Cut! How Not To Pitch Video Content”
3. “Getting Smart With Facebook, Part 1: Theory and Proof Points”