*For Profit, Not Just for Kicks.
When I thought of the title for this post I thought it sounded great. Then I was afraid it sounded like I was just trying to float some link bait. My real goal for publishing this post isn’t to sell you on the idea of adopting social media because it’s the cool thing to do. I just want to hold a discussion about the ways you can utilize existing technology (most of it free) to build your own 21st century ‘social media’ business.
The most important piece of the puzzle is building a tool that people want to use. Lots of people. If you can create a resource that clearly benefits others, your business has a great shot at making money.
It’s the Audience, Stupid
People are keen on targeting niche markets in the social media and online business worlds, and that’s a good plan for success. However there is such a thing as defining your core audience too narrowly. If your business idea doesn’t ‘scale’, in other words if it doesn’t appeal to at least several thousand or million people, the likelihood of success dries up. The reality of the business world is you need so many views to spark a certain amount of interest, which leads to a smaller amount of leads and finally conversions.
Ask yourself this: What size audience (customer base) do I need to run my business, and how well does my product fit into this core audience?
Freemium = Viral Selling
Give it away.
I recommend giving your product away free in order to grow an audience, but not the ‘entire’ product, just a scaled down version that people can use and forward to friends. Sure a lot of people will take the free content and run, but so what? It costs you nothing to share with them, especially if in the process these visitors help spread the word by retweeting links to your website (or sharing it on any social network).
Free is the bait which lets you find warm leads. Providing value first will endear more potential customers to you, as opposed to relying on cold calls and disruptive marketing. I’ve had sales jobs before where I made over 100 cold calls per day — seems like a lifetime ago — and trust me you don’t want to have to go down that road if you can avoid it.
Speaking of free, I mentioned before that most of the tools for your business are free, so let’s talk about some of them.
Granted, hosting a website costs a few dollars a month, but the content management system (CMS) is free — thinking WordPress here. You can also bill customers using PayPal, which is free to use even though they shave a small percentage of the sales price from each order. Other free tools include:
PitchEngine — Social Media Press Releases
BackType — See What People are Saying About Related Products or Activities
BlogPulse — Discover What’s Hot
Notice how these free services are also using the freemium model?
Bottom Line: Think about what people need, show them how to solve the need and encourage the sharing of the solution…while making the complete solution a revenue generating activity.