February 15, 2021
The better a business understands its target market, the easier it is to segment your efforts and focus ads on the right people. This makes it more likely to convert prospects into sales and drive your ROI.
The target audience informs all elements of your social media strategy and helps to identify your main niche. In order to understand your audience and craft relevant content, a little research is in order.
A target audience is a specific group of people you want to reach through your social channels. These are the people most likely to be interested in your brand, product, services, and content posted. There is likely some common thread that unites them, be it demographics, behaviors, or characteristics.
As you develop a target audience, don’t be afraid to get highly specific. Start with a broad category, like single dads or millennials, and branch out. A good social media audience will enable a brand to get into fine detail.
It should be noted, you can sell to everyone but not everyone can be targeted by the same social content. You can’t speak directly to your best prospects if you’re shouting at everyone.
Researching your audience on social media isn’t complicated. It’s typically about narrowing your focus while expanding reach. Here are a few steps to take to better understand who your audience is and how to reach them.
Which type of customers most want to engage with your brand on social media?
Start with the people already buying from you, following your brand, and interacting with posts. Data to consider includes:
If you are targeting a business, then consider things like:
Now would be a good time to also use shortened links and UTM codes in your social posts. You can then analyze who is clicking on your content to drill down on audience demographics.
Use Google Analytics once you have your UTM codes in place. The Audience Insights section provides valuable demographic data about your most engaged social media audience members.
If you want to be a fly on the wall when people are discussing your brand, social listening is the way to go. It’s the key to uncovering conversations about your industry, brand, and products. Monitoring keywords and hashtags will easily reveal what people are saying about you and the competition online. Even when your business isn’t tagged!
Here are a few social listening tools to get you started:
If you find posts that are relevant, reaching out to these people can help build your audience. Even when they’re not following you.
Social listening can also be used for deeper research. As you uncover new keywords and hashtags, you can expand your messaging and thus, broaden the audience reach through more relevancy.
Now that you know who the audience is and what they are saying, it’s time to discover where they congregate the most to discuss these things. There are a few tools you can use to achieve this goal, which includes:
How are your competitors getting by? Have you scanned their social channels? What posts are working? What complaints are being made? This is all valuable information when compiling a target audience. Odds are, your social media efforts are overlapping with theirs. Are they reaching audience segments you never considered?
There are a variety of ways you can stay on top of what competitors are doing. Here are a few tools:
This site is a great place to quickly research the top keywords and hashtags in your industry and more specifically, your niche. The site produces a list of the top shared content (along with who shared it) related to your search term.
The Content Analysis tab will also show you a breakdown of the most popular social media networks in your niche.
It should be noted that Buzzsumo only gives you a few free searches a day. So, if you plan on doing some heavy lifting, you may want to purchase a cheap plan.
Social media management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow a business to set up a “search stream” that allows you to keep an eye on the competition. Any keyword or hashtag can be used. Then, when that term is mentioned or shared, it comes up in your stream. This is a compiled list of how your competitors are using keywords on a daily basis.
This will also reveal patterns like post format and type (video, text, pic, etc.), content strategy, and audience behavior.
Start by understanding how an audience will see your product/service. Will it make their life better, easier, or just more interesting?
What does it do for them? Address specific pain points? Solve challenges? Help them meet goals?
If you don’t already have a clear list of benefits, it’s time to start brainstorming now. Creating benefit statements automatically involves stating basic information about your target audience.
Next, it’s time to start thinking about how you can create value for your audience. Some key questions to consider include:
If you’re having trouble figuring out exactly what your audience wants, why not just ask them? There are several sites online, like SurveyMonkey, that will allow a business to quickly and easily create surveys that can be posted on social. Use the survey method to discover exactly what your audience prefers and where they prefer to see it.
Ultimately, finding your target audience is about doing the research, paying attention, and taking the time to listen. It’s never an exact science with people involved, but the more time you spend getting to know your future customers, the easier it will be to sell.
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