Know-How Exchange : Social Media

In cases where the services are close, I would keep them together. Where services are very different, I would keep separate.

How to tell if they are close or separate? Look at whether the same person may want both. Health and safety appears to be pretty different, so I suspect that would be one to make separate. But the other could possibly work together - someone could start as adult day care, move to home care if their conditions warrant, then to hospice, etc. So the same person could want the different services at different times.

Note - the web address you listed doesn't work (and not just because of the period). Did you mean nvpna.org ? That also has a "missing notice tag" error in the page when I view it.

Dear Theresa,

Hello again!

Good heavens, you've got a lot on your plate, haven't you?

Here's my humble two cents' worth.

Social media-wise, in fact, MESSAGE wise, it's far better to keep everything you've outlined in your question together in one coordinated, integrated package. You may well be confused, even overwhelmed, because you've been gazing at the issue for a while.

Believe me, I feel your pain.

At the moment I'm writing not one but TWO books and as I flit from one to the other waves of angst sweep over me and every now and again as I'm writing, a little voice whispers in my ear "That won't work. You suck!"

Anyway, back to your question.

Informationally, users of Twitter and Facebook are browsers: they process all the information they encounter in smaller chunks and they're more inclined to click on a link and zip right back to their place of origin if what they find doesn't INSTANTLY light their fire, so to speak.

But blog users and video viewers? They are different. They might be the same person as the Twitter or Facebook user but as our interests shift, the way we seek out and process information also changes.

It's all to do with neural pathways and stimulus recognition, the details of which I won't bore you with because we'll be here for weeks!

Suffice it to say, when someone is searching for information via
a search engine, and via keywords, they're looking for different input, and with it, they're hunting for different results.

Many people think social media wise, that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are the bees knees. But they're wrong. If your plan is to build a solid following of e-mail subscribers that are looking for and expecting to find information that's specifically connected to their primary compulsions at that moment, your best tools are:

1. a blog.
2. great direct response sales copy.
3. e-mails to keep your subscribers informed.

Use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to add depth and to bring in leads, but spend no more than an hour per day on these three because they'll soak up way too much of your time.

By all means use them to direct people to your other links, but use your blog and great direct response copy to hold people's attention.

Get all the channels to link to each other so that the MESSAGE is unified (that's after all, the main point here, your message) but use social media as tools to deliver the message, not as vehicles to overpower or break up the message.

Your stakeholders, listeners, readers, and list members want consistency, relevance, significance, and specificity: they want to know about the cake, not the pan it was baked in.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Look at things not from your perspective, but your audience's. If you typical prospect would likely be interested only in one of your offerings, then split out the message (the primary benefit). At the end of the message, make the connection to the other services you offer. Remember that everyone is deluged with information, and information that's focused for MY needs will likely get my attention. If you flood me with "too much, too soon" then I'll likely not spend the extra time to find just the part of the message that interests me. This is true for all your various (social) media. For example, create separate landing pages for each of your services. Each of these pages can link to your full menu of services.

Segment based on consumer needs. If you have multiple solutions to the same need, you can combine them. If each product/service is directed toward a different consumer need, then keep them separate.

And the needs are those defined by your target audience, not by you. If the audience thinks you are addressing a need different from the one they perceive, you've lost them.

This may require some market research, but it's the only real solution to your problem.