Social media has really turned the world upside down. In the past, a newly published book sat on a shelf and hoped that somehow it might get your attention; now that book literally walks to you via your computer. 

So now you are sure that social media is the way to go when targeting your audience, what then do you need to do to draw your target audience to your site?

People go to the internet for many reasons. Top reasons are research, correspondence, online banking, file sharing, navigation, and shopping. With these different needs, you would hardly get noticed, what with the different information presented in the social media.

First, you have to identify your target audience. You have to create a product where you help your audience identify a need that they might not be aware of. Saying that your target market is the number of people in an area looking for houses is very general. Some people buy a house because of the convenience it brings them, being near their places of work. Older people would buy another house because they look at it as a place where they could spend the better years of their life, enjoying the fruits of their labors. Still, there are others who buy a house for investment. Thus, it would be best for you to identify a niche.

There are two ways in which you could build your targeted community. One is by building an organic community. Create a page where you can provide information that may be useful and relevant to your target market. Regularly providing useful information to a target audience will lay the groundwork for a loyal following. And the most important thing is that you should never let up in providing new and updated information.

Another way by which you could reach your target market is through paid community building. By leveraging on the advertising options made available by the social media sites, you can speed up building your community by focusing only on the people who would most likely want to read your content. Facebook can filter your options to target specific groups according to age, gender, interests, educational level and even location. Then, there would also be social sites catering to specific niches as Linked-In (the working group), Pinterest (specifically catering to specific skills, crafts and other interests), and Twitter (range of users would be young adults to adults and most would be using the handheld devices). Contrary to popular belief, paid advertising could cost you only as little as 20 cents per fan.

Even just taking into account the most popular social networking sites, you could already gain big following just by correctly identifying your target market's needs. Provide useful information and always follow through: a good reputation is what will sustain you.