5 Ways You Can Define your Social Media Target Audience

Social media is the new marketplace for serious businesses looking for growth, it has unique audience demography, and is an easy place to research.

So how do you define your target audience?

Researching your social media target audience shouldn’t be rocket science, it’s simply narrowing your focus to expand your reach, and get needed traffic.

A social media target audience is a specific group of people who interact with your social channels.

These people are interested in your content, products, or services. They have common traits like demographics, behavior, and language.

By now you know that you can’t sell to everyone and that your social media content shouldn’t target everyone (unless you’re Google).

That’s because you cannot communicate effectively with everyone. Your potential customers may be related (kids, parents, spouses, or colleagues) but they speak different social media languages.

Here is how you define your social media audience:

1. Compile data on your existing customers and social media audience

Who are your current customers? Your target audience are people currently identifying with your brand.

An easy way to know who they are is to monitor, likes, shares, and comments on your social posts (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram) Anyone willing to engage will be a likely target audience.

Anyone who’s ever bought from you is another likely target because they can easily become repeat buyers. That’s why you need a vigorous after-sales follow-up.

Here are some data points you should consider when collecting your audience’s data:

• Age: it doesn’t have to be their actual age, knowing their demographic age group is sufficient (are they boomers, Xers, Millenniums, Generation Y, or Generation Z)
• Location (and time zone): It’s also crucial to know where your social media audience lives. This will help you know which geographic areas to target and when to schedule your social ads and posts to ensure the best visibility.
• Language: You need to be conversant with the audience’s language to communicate effectively.
• Spending power and patterns: How much money does your target audience spend? What financial concerns should you address?
• Interests: What other interests does your target audience have, what TV shows do they watch, and what other businesses do they interact with?
• Challenges: What are your target audience’s pain points? take note and offer solutions.

Stage of life: What stage of life is your target audience? Are they college students, new parents, teen parents, or retirees?

Having a clear picture of your audience will help you to decide what type of content or products to post on your social media platforms.

2. Where Do They Look for Information Online?

Every human being needs information, and so does your target audience. Occasionally, your audience may be inundated with tons of information, - but where do they turn to find answers when they need it most?

Find communication channels your target audience identifies with and talk to them using a language they understand.

For example, if you notice that your audience reads marketing blogs and spends a lot of time on social sites like YouTube and LinkedIn, start posting content on these platforms.

3. Understand what your target audience wants from your social channels

Having a rock-solid understanding of how your product or service makes your audience’s life better, easier, and more interesting is a big plus.

Focus on solving their challenges. Address specific pain points, and help them meet their goals.

Find your competitive advantage and stand out from the competition, improve your product, or service, offer freebies, give something extra, a free tool, or a free trial period, and go an extra mile to keep your audience happy

Create value for your audience through social channels. consider the following key pointers:

• How can you help them overcome their purchasing barriers?
• What’s their buying journey like? Are they still researching, ready to buy, or simply looking for reviews?
• What type of content does your audience connect with easily?

Lastly, just ask them, if you can’t figure out their social media interests.

4. Who Does Your Target Audience Trust?

Trust is key to your target audience. No one purchases a product or service from a company they don’t trust. And that’s why having good reviews is important.

Reviews build trust and customer confidence. Strive to get as many good reviews as possible to grow your brand. Good reviews and positive comments garner a great reputation that attracts new customers.

Your company’s reputation is crucial, maintain a good rapport with your customers as they will act as evangelists and spread information about your brand on the internet and to their friends and families.

5. Check out the competition

Odds are, your social media audience overlaps with that of your competitors. Therefore, it’s worth checking out your competitors, to learn and to benefit from them.

Here are two helpful tools to help you gather your competition’s insights:

Buzzsumo

This is an important tool that helps you see a list of top shared content across social networks, including engagement data. Look for patterns, formats, and channels that have worked well for your competitors.

Search streams

This is also an important tool for monitoring keywords and hashtags. Moreover, you can keep an eye on what your competition is up to. You can also easily view your competition’s social posts, patterns in hashtags, post type, and content strategy.

Your task in defining your social media audience is to identify and understand your niche so that you can dominate.

Researching your audience will help you craft relevant content, messaging, and ads, which will in turn help you to obtain higher conversion rates and better social media ROI.