Understand Your Market

The more understanding you have on your market, the less scary it will be to develop content for them. The 1-9-90 model exists to help you contextualize the marketplace. To help you understand this model, I provided visual content below with brief explanations.

Influencers are the group of people that drive the conversation about a specific topic, service or brand. When they create content, others listen and engage.

Advocates are the group that curates, contextualizes and repackages influencer content and provides their own point of view.

Enthusiasts are the broader market. They rely heavily on word of mouth, peer recommendations and Google search. They are highly influenced by the 1 and 9 percent.

The best way to understand this is by creating a story. Michael Brito, a social media marketing professor at San Jose State, used yelp as an example. Yelp users are the 90 percent. Lets say you are going out to drinks with a friend and you want to find the best place, so you pull up yelp.

The 9 percent are the yelp readers. They thoroughly read and engage with the reviews. If you're looking for a place to take your friend out, you might know a good one based on the yelp reviews you read. These readers take in the information and relay it to their friends or acquaintances.

The 1 percent is the yelp writers. These are the content creators. They tell you how they felt about a certain place and skew your perspective. There drive the conversation and other people will respond.

This is important to understand the market within these three segments because each audience needs a different approach from you. Once you understand your audience, you can alter the strategy to target them.

First, you need to find your influencers, your 1 percent. Ask yourself how large is their community across all channels? Are they relevant to your business or brand? Does their message and content resonate with their audience? Will they improve your brand?

Once you have your research done, you strategize influencer activation across PESO-- paid media, earned media, shared media and owned media. Add your list of influencers on twitter and follow them, engage with them and begin a conversation.

The more you begin to think of your market in terms of the 1-9-90 model, your brand will not only grow and improve, but it will be talked among a relevant audience. This is how you start to organically gain followers. People are most likely to take tips from their friends than they are by a company. All you have to do is begin that initial conversation with the content creators.