For most organizations, the conversation of “why” or “should” we do social media has shifted to “where” and “how” do we do social media?

A major component of answering those questions effectively is understanding in which social platforms your customers are already connected and concentrated, because there really is no benefit in beating your customers or clients to the punch this time! Companies need to follow…not lead, their customers across the social networking web.

Maybe your boss thinks none of your customers are on Facebook, but you think they are. How can you prove it?

Or maybe you’re a small-business owner, and know many of your clients or customers are socially connected, but aren’t sure how to find them?

Here are 4 ways to find out where your customers are in social media:

#1: Hire Someone to Tell You

Rapleaf and Flowtown are just two services that reside in the emerging field called “social anthropology”. You provide them with the list of all your customer email addresseses, and they figure out who among your customers is on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media networks; their likes, and other important details.

#2: Analyze Email Behavior

Have you added links to all your social accounts in your emails? Have you added the ability for your email recipients to share content on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and elsewhere? If you send email routinely, you need to add these functions to your email immediately.

Most quality email service providers give you the option of easily adding sharing tools, and you can then run a report showing which of your subscribers clicked your Twitter link and/or shared content on Facebook.

Viola! Now you know that person is a member and is active on those social sites.

#3: Just Ask!

One of the most obvious ways of finding out where your customers are hanging out and using social media is also the simplest, but unfortunately the least utilized. Just ask them.

If you have a “Contact Us” form, an online lead generation form, an email newsletter signup or a shopping cart, why are you still only asking for name, address and email address?

Add data collection fields for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, at minimum.

#4: Your Friends at Hat Trick Associates

If you have email addresses for your customers, we here at HTA can actual use a little trick that takes advantage of the system functionality of one of the top email providers.

Without giving away the whole secret, let us tell you that with just your email list, we can tell you within the hour every single one of them who are on both Facebook and Twitter!

If you’d like to learn more, or just how we do it, all you need to do is Contact Us!