One of the marketing red flags I often hear among small business owners is the blanket statement of wanting to market a business “on social media.”  If you are not able to further unpack the idea of marketing on social media, unfortunately you are ill-prepared to succeed there.

Social media is not a magical land of clients. It is not a singular place you can go where one message can be heard by everyone. It is not a place where you build your page and new customers instantly flock to you.

I like to think of social media as a neighborhood block of houses. Each platform is a house on the block. Each house has rooms in it. At any given moment, you could find a neighbor in a different room – or even visiting another house. And it is much the same with social media.

A person may be on Facebook or Twitter or Periscope or Pinterest or Snapchat or any number of other tools. In any given moment, there is a limit to the number of places they can be at attention.

But being “on Facebook” or “on Twitter” or “on Periscope” or “on Pinterest” or “on Snapchat” is not solution enough. The reality is that people have specific behaviors on any social media platform they use. They interact in particular groups, visit particular pages, talk to particular contacts, participate in particular chats. You can be on the platform as much as you want, but if you are not interacting in the same place as your target market, they may not run into you.

People have specific behaviors on any #socialmedia platform they use. #marketing #smallbiz #smb Share on X

Social media in general requires long-term focus and relationship building. If you are going to monetize it eventually, you have to be building relationships with your target market. When small business owners tell me that they are “on social media” but can’t explain more about what they are doing there, I have to wonder if they are missing their mark.

#SocialMedia in general requires long-term focus and relationship building. #smallbiz #smb Share on X

So, take a moment to check in with your strategy for marketing on social media. Ask yourself what target markets you are trying to reach, on what platforms those people are interacting, and where they are communicating on each platform. Once you can answer those questions, you are best able to determine if you are marketing in the right places “on social media.”

To learn more about how to best utilize your social media, especially in conjunction with blogs and newsletters, be sure to check out A Crash Course in Online Marketing. This is loaded with tips on how to get the most out of your online marketing plan.