Four tips for building a social media audience

Social media is an information gathering and exchange tool. It is one tool in the communication grab bag – an idea that is slowly starting to sink in for marketing professionals and non-professionals alike, which is making social media more approachable to more people.

At the NorthEast SAS Users Group conference, Dave Thomas, the Executive Director for New Marketing Labs, gave the Sunday night keynote address and talked about the need for SAS professionals to embrace social media as a source of information and professional development. He also gave four tips for engaging your online audience.

These tips will help you as you build your audience:

1. Listen. Before you open your first account, search to find what people are saying about the topic you are interested in: you, your company, statistics, etc. This will help you decide where you want to be – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Where are people talking about your interests?
2. Learn. Social media can be a professional development tool. Pick one tool that looks interesting and search for those topics that you are interested in.
3. Engage. According to Thomas, the 80/20 rule is a good rule of thumb: 80 percent of your content should be of direct use to your audience. It should be useful to people so that people will follow you and want to hear what you have to say and talk with you about the things you want to hear.
4. Enlighten. Use your efforts in a way that lightens your audience’s load.

For more do-it-right tips, read “How to be a social media doer” by Alison Bolen. Tell me how you are using social media to gather information or improve your SAS skills.