168,000 reasons to embrace social network groups

Like many web professionals, I am now managing the social media presence of some of my small business clients along with the rest of their digital media requirements.

 Without doubt, the most difficult task this presents is the extraction of regular, quality content that I can distribute to my client’s various networks.

Because as has been raised here many times before, regular content is a new and often scary thing to most smaller business operators.

 Particularly if, like most smaller business operators, they are the other side of the 30-something mark, with those falling under that age much more familiar with the posts, tweets, Likes and shares of social media.

But one of my clients is very much the exception.

Intellectual property boom

This client, an educator in interpersonal communication and presentation, really does earn that oft-overused moniker of ‘guru’.

More than 20 years of educating business clients in this specialised field has given her volumes of A grade material. 

The only problem was, she wasn’t using it to attract new business.

Instead she simply stored the bulk of it on her PC as material for the next course or workshop that she was hired to deliver.

In this age of so called ‘content marketing’, that habit was tantamount to heresy.

The new rivers of gold

Content is the new ‘rivers of gold’ because it attracts and retains customers in so many ways for very little investment.

As the above diagram illustrates, not only does good content provide brilliant search engine candy, it also acts as an invaluable ‘sign-up magnet’, can be distributed cheaply and allows you to keep in touch with existing customers in a non-invasive way.

Its Return On Investment is generally stunning – with one proviso. 

That the content is relatively easy to generate in the first place.

And this is where my client differed from so many others.

Because with at least 20 years of top class training materials and aids at her disposal, she had a virtual library of ready-made content at her fingertips.

No sitting up late at night summonsing up inspiration.  No planning sessions to identify topics that might interest her readers.

In fact, once she audited her materials, we found literally hundreds of brilliant articles, tips, primers and commentaries all ready to start disseminating.

The only problem was, her distribution list was relatively small.

We needed to grow her audience from a few hundred to closer to a few hundred thousand.

The gold in groups

Given her market was Business to Business, most of her Blue Chip clients had LinkedIn accounts.  And in turn, most were members of several relevant ‘groups’ – the communities of special interest within most social networks.

Simply by searching for groups that her clients were likely to inhabit, we were able to identify dozens of Groups that she could join and in turn find a new and significant audience for her already prepared content.

Sure, many were ‘private’ groups that her admission had to be approved for, but given her standing her acceptance rate proved to be very high

Once she was accepted as a member, the number of groups that would allow her to distribute her content grew steadily.  In fact, the number of people within these groups now number 168,000.  And growing.

Radio station audiences

Thus far it’s a little early to get a measure of ROI on her content marketing strategy

Suffice it to say that a number a radio station would be proud of now has my client in their respective inboxes and social network feeds on a weekly basis.

And that can’t be bad for anyone’s business.

Of course, few businesses are able to have a bank of quality content like this expert.

But by identifying the type of content that you can generate and by judiciously identifying social network groups that are willing audiences for it, you may well find yourself with an affordable and valuable marketing asset.

And it doesn’t cost you a cent to accumulate it.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team, which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.