How can you ensure your social media audience is diverse and representative?

Ein Schritt, der gerne übersprungen wird, ist die Definition der eigenen Zielgruppe. Viele haben das Gefühl, sich mit einer Zielgruppe einzuschr?nken und sehen die eigentlichen Vorteile davon nicht. Nicht alle Menschen lesen die gleichen Magazine, Blogs oder Bücher. Nicht jeder ist in derselben Lebenslage, im selben Alter oder hat dieselben Wünsche, Sorgen, Bedürfnisse, Fragen oder Kritiken. Erst wenn man sich für eine Zielgruppe entschieden hat, kann man sich auf deren Bedürfnisse und Herausforderungen konzentrieren. Wer die Sprache seiner Zielgruppe spricht, zieht sie an, weil sie sich verstanden fühlt. Mit der Wahl der Zielgruppe ergibt sich im n?chsten Schritt die geeignete Wahl der Social-Media-Plattform.

WAIT! You need to know what you want with a social media audience before you determine whether it needs to be diverse (to serve your business goals), segmented, broad, deep, etc. Additionally, social media audience goals are automatically capped by the size, talents and bandwidth of your social media team. Do you have a team of one who has no budget and no access to social media analytics and integration platforms? Do you have a huge team with an unlimited budget? Or are you somewhere in the vast inbetween?

To ensure a diverse and representative social media audience, companies can take several steps. First, create content that reflects diversity in race, gender, age, and backgrounds. Feature a range of voices and perspectives. Encourage employees to be brand advocates, showcasing their unique experiences. Engage with diverse communities and amplify underrepresented voices by sharing their content. Participate in relevant cultural events or causes. Conduct regular audits of your audience demographics and adjust strategies as needed. It's essential to be authentic, genuinely committed to inclusivity, and open to feedback from the community.

Take a step back and consider this: All social media managers, analysts and associates need to have some knowledge and experience with "home brew" methods for auditing your audience. It can be via a spreadsheet, simple quantitative or qualitative methods (which you should've* learned in college), using the in-app analytics as a launchpad for your own breakdowns etc. Know the tools available to you and how to use them, because when you use or present this data, leaders could* question its accuracy and you'll need to account for that so C.Y.A.!

Again, you need to scope what "diverse and representative" means for you and your brand because creating content that appeals to a massive audience may be a poor use of your time, and diffuse the potency of your brand because you're engaging people it doesn't truly resonate with. Test. Test. And then test some more. Note who's engaging with your content. See who's commenting. What audiences/segments are clicking through to the blogs, videos, pages and offers you've linked to? With audiences, more does not equal better. Better means better. (A bit simplistic, don't you think Trevor?) Yes, but it's true. You want more qualified people, or people who want/could be qualified, to follow and engage with your brand. Not just more people.

Make sure your marketing is diverse. Great place to start. You want to speak and bring in more faces of color as your clientele/guests? Ensure that your website, social media, printed materials include people of color. Is it hard to find stock photos of more than white people? Sure is - what a great opportunity to hire diverse models, or maybe even hire and pay well to your current clientele that represents who you want to continue to build an audience and following with.

This is probably the most important thing. People want to see themselves in your content. So show them that your brand is for everyone by being inclusive. However, this has to be a company-wide initiative. You can't just post inclusive content on social when your website is lacking. Or the product itself doesn't take into consideration the needs of various audiences.

The biggest problems I see in social media content and engagement are with brand, franchise, IP, industry audiences themselves. Believe it or not, but there's a barrier to entry (typically erected by an established, active and vocal numerical minority) to things like cars, sports, video games, movies, etc. -- and the same can* be true for your brand. Yes, create inclusive and relevant content, but ensure you have the bandwidth to engage and redirect your new and established audiences so people feel heard and included. Don't rely on content and chance for your audiences to monitor themselves. And "monitor" doesn't mean "take no action".

To pull in a diverse audience you have to create for the audiences you want. Work with creators that look like the customers you are working to attract. People like to see themselves in the content being created or be able to relate to it. Be thoughtful when doing this, don't be performative. Diversity of partners and content should always be a top priority for your team.

One way to make inclusive content is to consider the needs of audiences with additional challenges such as dyslexia or visual impairment. Use camel case hashtags to allow screen reader technology to distinguish between words. Minimise emojis in text as these don't translate well for screen readers. Consider the colour of text and whether it stands out from the background colour in images with wording - darker text on lighter backgrounds is more readable. Don't use large blocks of text in capital letters as its harder to read. Finally left align longer blocks of text rather than have it centred as it makes it easier to read and holds people's attention for longer. Breaking up blocks of text can also make it more manageable.

This isn't a suggestion, this is a must. Engaging with your channel helps personify your brand to your audience through your actions -- which also means you need to make sure you behave inline with your brand's intended look, tone and feel. This is a delicate dance of acknowledging existing "fans" and welcoming, engaging and encouraging net new ones... ...all while policing interactions to ensure seemingly frictionless exchanges between new and established audience members -- which is a boon for your brand and the larger industry.