Know Your Target
Today's organizations know that all messages don't resonate the same way with different groups of people. A target audience is essential for social media campaigns.
Steps to Finding Your Social Media Target Audience
1. Identify Your Ideal Customer
A target audience is the demographic of people most likely to be interested in your product or service. If you own a plumbing company, your target audience is property owners, both commercial and residential. If you own a toy store, your target audience is parents, grandparents, and anyone else with children in their lives.
The first step in creating your social media marketing strategy is to create buyer personas. Instead of focusing on large groups of people and companies, creating buyer personas helps tailor your message to an individual person. It also helps make your target audience as specific as possible in order to narrow your scope.
Your current customers are a great source of information about your current customers. Send them surveys asking why they chose you and what are the biggest business problems your products or services have solved. And don’t forget about communicating with the departments that interact with your customers, such as customer service and your sales department, as they’re constantly in contact with your buyers.
2. Identify Platforms Your Target Audience Uses
Understanding the online behavior of your social media target audience will be essential to know where best to utilize your social channels. Pew Research performs many valuable studies, one of which breaks down the demographics of the different social media networks, which showed adults who say they use Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter is each largely the same as in 2016, with only Instagram showing an uptick in use during this time period.
By researching your social media target audience you’ll know where to find them and how to tailor your message directly to them. Don’t discount the value of paid advertising either! On most of the platforms, you can target specific interests, demographics, time zones, country, and more. That means you can ensure your message reaches your target audience. Do your homework so that you can be successful.
3. Tailor Content for Your Target Audience
Always keep an eye on your competitors and how they use social media. What are they doing that drives engagement? What do you see that would draw you in and would the same tactic work for your strategy? What types of content are they promoting…video, polished graphics, podcasts, webinars, etc?
Again, use the tools and information available to you such as Buzzsumo. This site allows you to enter a specific URL or topic and the results show the articles receiving the most shares across the different social media platforms. There are many social media marketing tools available to make your life easier.
Your social media marketing strategy can’t simply be promoting your own content! Share posts from thought leaders and industry experts. Social media is about providing resources to develop trust. Use the tools to find and share articles and content relevant and helpful to your target audience.
Without a targeted audience and a targeted approach, your social media marketing strategy will fall on deaf ears. Make sure your audience hears your message by spending the time necessary for researching how and where they spend their time. Social media engagement is the best way to convert followers to leads and eventually to sales. That means you can’t just post and walk away. Become an active member of your community and engage your social media target audience.
Setting goals is the only way to track the ROI of your social media marketing strategy. None of that is possible without determining your target audience. Once your target audience is defined, establish S.M.A.R.T. Goals to track the success of your social media marketing strategy.
About the author
Hi, my name is Rick and I thank you for reading this article!
I explore to learn new stuff every day and here I will share all my experiences and thoughts with you.
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