You don’t engage in social media activities for the fun of it (although it can be fun). You’re in business, and you have business goals to meet. You think that using social media will help you meet those goals — like making money — but how. You need a clearly defined social media strategy. Strategic clarity will guide you in meeting those goals. Without clarity, your social media activities become scattershot and vague. They lack energy because they lack focus.

Focus on your social media goals

Why are you engaging in social media? To build relationships, to position your company as a thought leader, to better understand your customers’ needs, to build credibility through word of mouth, for direct sales. Whatever your goals, you need to clearly understand them and focus your content on helping you reach those goals. Always ask yourself, what action do we need potential customers to take to help us meet our goals?

Match your content to your audience

Who is your audience. Right now. In the particular social media channel you’re using. Are they people who don’t know you? Show them that you have insights about industry trends. Offer original research, link to other highly regarded sources of information. Are they prospects who know your brand but don’t know that you have a solution to their problem? Use customer stories that demonstrate that you’ve solved similar problems for others. Are they almost ready to buy but aren’t sure who to buy from? Use content that compares you to your competitors or content that implies a recommendation. Include case studies and examples of how your ideas were applied successfully.

Make it clear — it’s not about you!

When considering your content, your audience is asking themselves one question: Why should I care? They are only engaging with you because they believe there’s something in it for them. You need to make it clear that you appreciate that, and that your content has been created specifically because it has something in it for them.

For more information

• Social Media Content: 10 Ways to Energize Your Conversation
• Social Media Examiner: Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
• Survey of B2B Buyers’ Use of Social Media

Now that you’ve put all that effort into creating your great thought leadership content, what are you going to do with it? You probably published it originally to engage your prospects and customers. But to reach new and larger audiences you should regularly republish your content on a variety of online media sites. Your content will not only show up when people search those sites for your topic, but these postings can help you move to the top of general search engines as well. For example, when you search “thought leadership marketing” in Google, an e-book that I posted on Scribd shows up in the top ten listings. That’s higher than this blog!

So, where should you publish? Here are my top ten sites for repurposing your content (and I recommend that you use them all).

• SlideShare
• WhitePapers.org
• BNet
• BetterManagement.com
• Scribd
• Manyworlds: Thought Leadership for Business
• YouTube
• Ezine Articles
• ArticleBiz.com
• BusinessIntelligence.com

Do you have any sites you’d like to recommend?