
Different Content for Different People
This is the third in a series of blog posts where I deconstruct the social media marketing process in order to solve the content development problem. The number one cause of social media marketing failure is poor and/or inconsistent content development. This is especially acute for small to mid-sized B2B companies. Why? Because…
- SMB B2Bs don’t have the resources that large companies have to do the requisite content development.
- B2Bs sell complex products and services to professional business people; so their content must be concise, compelling, relevant, useful and (hopefully) entertaining – not an easy task.
You can’t create compelling content if you don’t have a clear idea of who you’re communicating with. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next. Target personas should include current customers, as well as prospects. I develop one persona for both customers and prospects. If you have more than one type of product or service, you should create a persona for each product line (and probably a different corporate voice and SM profile for each too).
You Want More of Your Best
If you haven’t created a clear profile of your most desirable prospects, this process can help you do that:
Take a look at your list of current customers. Which are your most profitable? Which are the most fun to do business with? (It’s always interesting to see the overlap between these.) Put this subset of customers into a spreadsheet and score them on a list of demographics (age, location, industry, role/title, size of business, etc.) and psychographics (attitudes, beliefs, values, personality type, buying motives, etc.).
Let’s say, for example, you determine that your prime prospect has the following attributes:
- lives in the Midwest
- is between 35 and 55 years old
- works in a small (10 to 50 employee) credit union or community bank
- is the COO, VP, (person in charge) of Operations
- is male
- is married and has school age children
- is active in his community
- and makes buying decisions based on how they might affect his career.
You now have a good idea of who your best target is, what his interests and concerns are, and how you can motivate him. Some people even name their primary persona (I named mine ‘Erica’). Print out this list of attributes and tack it up where you can read it from your desk chair. Before writing a blog post, or tweeting, or contributing to a LinkedIn discussion, review that list to remind yourself who you’re conversing with. It makes the process much easier. Try it and see.
Please let me know if you have any other targeting tips that help you in developing content, or if you decide to try this process, let me know how it works for you.


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