Grow Your Small Town Reach

It today’s social-media landscape, reaching your target audience is now easier than ever, providing you stick to key strategies.  This guide is written with the intent to help small organizations and small-town businesses build their audience, craft an online presence, and generate a constant feed of daily content.  

THE STRATEGY

The key to a strong multi-platform is being consistent with delivering high-quality content.  Like anything in business, to be successful a person needs to be organized. Knowing what platforms to use, deciding what type of content to create or share, scheduling content to be distributed, and understanding how to get others to share and follow that content is all important to success.

CROSS-PLATFORM CONTENT

To reach a wide audience, you will need to promote yourself across several platforms.  First, think of who you want to reach. Personal demographics alongside a constantly changing technological landscape will determine where it is best to place your resources.  

In the late 90s/early 2000s people barely used websites unless they were younger or in a tech field, most relying on television and print media for their information.  Fast-forward to the present, with the advent of social media platforms and widespread high-speed internet access the majority now gets their info from online sources.       

Currently, websites are good for creating a central location for information resources, blog articles, or online shops, but are not the best for attracting attention.  Social media pages are best utilized to quickly distribute content and funnel viewers to a central source, while private groups are a way to efficiently organize and inform followers.

Age does play a big role in distributing information.  If you are trying to reach the “Baby-boomer” audience they tend to rely on major media outlets (broadcast networks) and newspapers for their information; meanwhile “Millennials” are more apt to use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and read Blogs. The youngest adult demographic (people 18-22) tend to use newer social media outlets such as Snapchat or TikTok.  Knowing who you are trying to reach tells you how you need to communicate. Choose your outlets wisely.

Making sure that the content “speaks” to the target audience is what’s going to get them to follow you.  Having 100,000 followers from around the world won’t matter if nobody in your town follows you. Unless your target is a global audience, understanding your local demographic is important to create reach.  Know the size and general make-up of the population. This will allow you to customize your content.

SETTING A DAILY MEDIA SCHEDULE

Each day you want to post several pieces of media. These should be varied posts and capture the attention of the target audience.  Depending on your organization’s goals, structure, etc… these posts could be news, announcements, pictures from events, blog articles, tips & tricks, tutorials, and include everything from written to audio and video content. 

To keep track of everything, make a list of all the platforms you will be posting across.  Most current online resources allow for easy cross-platform posting, so make use of those resources. 

Keeping high-quality content constantly flowing can be daunting, but setting up a schedule can be easy if you keep it simple.  Below is a sample schedule and themes that my own gym uses.

• All posts are spread throughout the day, usually 6am, Noon, and 6pm (high traffic online for our followers)
• Daily motivational or humorous gym/diet meme
• Daily exercise tutorial or nutrition infographic
• Post about a gym or staff member exercising
• Post a news article or study related to health science, fitness, nutrition, or lifestyle
• Post a healthy recipe
• Post a weekly/monthly challenge
• Weekly online check-in with our customers
• Quarterly Free E-book or Online Exercise Program for followers
• Services and Membership advertising is kept to a minimum. People don't want to be sold to all the time. Generate content they like and you will turn them into customers.

GENERATING DAILY CONTENT

Thanks to the fast-paced world we live in, everyone has a short attention span and want daily, if not hourly updates.  At a very minimum, an organization should have a daily online presence. This could be as simple as posting a meme or sharing a news article.  

Meme generation is easy for any organization to use.  Simply put, an internet meme is an idea [usually a quote overlaid on a picture] that gets shared rapidly through a population.  These are easy to create using a graphic program or one of the online meme generators. Use inspirational quotes, messages your organization wants to spread, or humorous quotes to get more attention.  

Not all of your content for  has to come from one source. You can use news articles, videos, or media releases on your website providing you stick to some simple guidelines.  First, use a catching description or an excerpt to call attention to the post, then provide a hyperlink to the content (See “From the News” Graphic).  Be sure the source is verified and not full of pop-ups or viruses. Also, limit the amount of “paywall” sites used [newspapers tend to use paywalls to generate revenue, but will result in many finding other sources].  Always give credit where credit is due, never plagiarize or misrepresent other people's content as your own.

UNDERSTANDING COPYRIGHT FOR MEDIA

Copyright Law is complex and treacherous to navigate.  By sticking to these simple guidelines, you should be free of any issues with your content.

• Use only photos & pictures (or blanks) you own the rights to when generating Memes or other graphics.
• Avoid having music playing in the background of any live or recorded videos posted directly to Facebook or other social media platforms.  These tend to get flagged and muted, or deleted by the platform and can get the account banned or locked for copyright violations. If it is unavoidable in a video, be sure to list the proper title and artist in the description.
• When posting content to your website, provide a link to the source material.  DO NOT COPY content wholesale to your website! It is suggested to quote an interesting excerpt from the source and then provide a hyperlink to the source material. (Example Below).

SPREADING THE WORD

All the good daily content won’t matter unless it gets seen!  Here are some suggestions to get more views.

• Get high-view pages cross-share content on social media. 
• Make Friends! Ally with “influencers”, people with thousands of followers share your content.
• Go in person! Visit the locals! Organize regular in-person meeting with people, do community service, go to community events not associated exclusively with your organization. 
• Create multiple pages and online groups that share content.  This creates a wider net that can capture a larger audience. 
• Create feeder pages.  Keep the theme of these social media pages and groups simple and share high-traffic creating posts (funny posts, motivational content, heart-warming or heartstrings-pulling articles, political cartoons, etc…).  These generally get thousands of followers quickly and can help grow your main page.

SETTING YOURSELF APART

Once you have your multi-platform online presence set up, you will have to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack and generate a following. Back in the early 2000s, email lists were a premium, but they are pretty much dead now with spam filters and most people ignoring everything but their close contacts. Social media presence has become the go-to for most businesses and organizations.

While using click-bait titles or pictures of girls in bikinis can get a lot of clicks on your article or website, they don't generate the type of followers that most organizations want. Stick to the following to keep your reputation high.

• Be sure to always fact-check anything your pages distribute. It only takes one bad post to ruin your reputation.
• Use truthful and non-misleading titles for articles and posts.
• Only offer services, products, and information you can stand behind.

BECOMING THE INFLUENCER

Eventually as you build your reach, people will gravitate to you for information. At that point you should have your media machine going full steam ahead! Keeping your audience engaged with daily content and offerings will keep them coming back for more.