If you’ve decided to incorporate social media tools into your mix for supporting your customers, have you thought of looking beyond your existing community? Let me ask this in another way, would you like to expand your market?

Brian Solis recently had an excellent post that included this graphic:image

The stages are from the customer’s perspective. But what about from a company’s perspective? Here are some questions for you:

  • Are you aware of who your evangelists are?
  • Do you know what segments are using your products & what types are considering it?
  • Who is aware of your products? and who isn’t? (should they be?)

Allow me to digress for a moment: On our recent trip to Anaheim, CA, my husband & I had a new adventure. We rode the city buses. Now that may not seem like a big deal but it was. Both of us grew up in rural areas with no mass transit. The closest that either of us have been to subways/people movers are in the Seattle & Denver airports. I want to visit London & we’ll be using the Tube, so the experience in California was good.

Details for our family & friends (and anyone else that wants a chuckle) – We asked the hotel staff for a taxi & they suggested the bus because it was ‘easy’. After a few moments of giving instructions including the word ‘transfer’ & ‘I’m not sure what bus numbers’ the person giving instructions said, “I’ll call you a cab”. At this point we were determined to try it. And on our return the hotel staff were quite amazed we accomplished it!

It was a good experience because it made us realize the realities of mass transportation in a city. A very helpful young lady our daughter’s age helped us change buses since that was her stop. She was attending a trade school & looked confused when we said our daughter was going to get a degree in English. On the 2nd bus we talked with the bus driver & learned a lot. He helped load two wheel chairs and told us why he loved his job. We noticed that riders assumed that he knew Spanish (and he told us about that too).

Overall we were quite impressed with the bus ride. It cost us $6 total vs the $60 we paid taxis one evening. Also it was good for us to expand our horizons.

That was a real life experience, but it can be applied to online experiences. Are companies looking beyond the usual places where they expect to find their customers? What would happen if you took the risk like we did in riding the bus & exploring new venues & talking with the people there? What could be learned?

I represent that idea because that explains my connecting with ACDSee. People in my niche were talking about their software behind the walls of a forum that Google wasn’t crawling. An enterprising employee at ACDSee joined the forums & found us using their software in a unique way. In the end, ACDSee gained a new market.

So where should you be having new adventures with social media?