The Layman's Guide to Audience Targeting on Social Media

Whether you use SEO, email newsletters, or social media marketing, that content needs to be shared. And to do so effectively, you need to target the right people.

User targeting is crucial to both organic (free) and paid approaches to social media marketing. In this guide, we’ll look at how you can reach your target audience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Facebook Targeting Explained

Facebook has the most sophisticated targeting software out there. Seriously, there’s a lot of options here, and its only rival is LinkedIn ads.

Now, there are a couple of ways you can target:

• Restricted Audience
• Audience Targeting
• Facebook Ads

All three options are fairly different, so let’s take it one by one.

Restricted Audience works just like it sounds. It limits your posts to a select group of people. You can restrict your post by age or location. This is great if you post in multiple languages or have several locations on one page.

News Feed Targeting allows you to hone in on more specific demographics. It includes age and location, as well as language, gender, and interests. That means you could easily target a 20-something woman in Japan who is interested in investing.

Unlike Restricted Audience, this option won’t limit your posts to this demographic. It will only make it more visible to these users. If a middle-aged man from Russia visits your page, he will still see the post!

Likewise, this option doesn’t guarantee more views. It’s completely organic – meaning you’re not putting in money. News Feed Targeting just makes it more likely someone who follows you in the chosen demographic will find the post.

Facebook Ad Targeting, of course, gives you even greater control. It’s basically a paid version of News Feed Targeting, guaranteed to get you more views. The options are similar to audience targeting, but you can also exclude users, or narrow your audience. For example, that 20-something from Japan must like investing AND stocks.

Because you are using ads, you also have various options of how the ad will look. That’s a topic for another post, but it’s something to consider. For example, if you know your audience uses their phone more than a desktop, you can choose a more mobile-friendly ad type, like Instant Experience.

You can also use the infamous dark post to target your audience. Ever seen a “sponsored” ad in your feed? Yeah, that’s a dark post. These posts are technically unpublished posts, and they are precisely targeted to your audience. The only problem? You don’t get nearly as much information as you would with a regular ad post. In other words: It’s hard to track the ROI.

The Power Of Twitter Trends

Twitter targeting largely comes down to one thing: Hashtags. But what if you want to target users in a specific location? In this case, you will need to change your “trends” location. This will allow you to pounce on popular hashtags in your target country. To do this, you just need to click the gear icon in the trends box.

Why use Twitter Trends? If you’re quick, it’s easy to leverage the wider reach of the popular topic.

Another resource is Twitter Ads. Like with the Facebook Ad platform, you can narrow your audience by age, location, interest, platform, and language.

In my personal experience, I have found Twitter to be more geared towards organic growth. Having consistent conversations, jumping in on relevant hashtags, and targeting the right location can provide steady growth.

Instagram

Like Twitter, Instagram relies heavily on hashtags. However, you can also use geolocation to your advantage. In every post or story, you can add a location. This will make your post more prominent to fans in that area, or for people who search for posts related to a specific place.

However, since Instagram is also owned by Facebook, you can run your targeted Facebook Ad on Instagram as well. Just make sure to connect both of your accounts for the full effect!

You can target users for a promoted post directly on the Instagram app, but the features are to nearly as robust. While you can target via interest, age, and location, it doesn’t offer nearly as many options.

Can You Target On LinkedIn?

LinkedIn uses hashtags for organic targeting but it has a robust ad targeting system. You can even target individuals in specific job positions! Honestly, if you’re B2B, LinkedIn ads are likely the way to go, as its offerings are incredibly in-depth targeting options, from LinkedIn group members to specific companies!

The only downside? It’s more expensive than Facebook. In fact, a post that costs me a $1.50 on Facebook is likely to cost $10 on LinkedIn. So when creating ads for LinkedIn, be laser-focused and make sure the copy and imagery are relevant.

LinkedIn company pages can make use of the ads, but what about your personal profile? For many professionals, the personal profile has been more leverage than a company page.

To better “target” your audience on LinkedIn, you just need to find them manually. You can do this by choosing a location for your profile that matches your target audience, joining groups, and connecting with prospects.

I would add you shouldn’t spam your connections or groups. But fostering relationships with relevant connections is likely to expand your reach to the right people.

Reaching Your Target Audience: Additional Tips

Knowing the targeting mechanics isn’t enough. In this section, we’ll go over how to optimize your campaign.

If your main goal is generating traffic back to your site, you should use UTM tags.

A UTM tag can be attached to a link and it helps your Google Analytics better track where each click is coming from. It’s an excellent way to gauge how your targeting is working. After all, you can target all you want, but if you aren’t reaching the right audience, you’ll know.

If you get a ton of clicks from Facebook, but none from Twitter, that may be a sign there’s a problem with your Twitter targeting or copy.

Luckily, Google has made it easy to create UTM tags. Just fill in the blanks and it will generate not only a new URL, but a short link as well.

Beyond this, there are a couple of other ways to reach your target audience:

• Groups – Relevant groups can give you access to your target demographic, but there are two risks: oversaturation and being banned for promotional content. Don’t wear out your groups by overposting, don’t post purely promotional content, and try to stay involved with the users by commenting and liking other posts. This option is available for LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Influencers – Interact with macro and micro-influencers, and their fans in the comment section to increase brand recognition. This is great for Instagram and Twitter. To make things easier on Twitter, it’s recommended to make lists of influencers, so you can easily keep up with their updates without cluttering your main feed. Lists also make it easy to maintain a strong Follower-Following ratio.
• Twitter chats – Become involved in or host a Twitter chat. This is a great way to understand how your audience thinks, what they need, and how to create content to help them. It can also be a great chance to network.
• Comment – Yes, engagement is a great way to boost your visibility and showcase authenticity. Also, the algorithm likes them. By helping someone else boost their engagement, you are creating a win-win situation. So don’t hesitate to jump in a conversation.

Don’t Forget To Test

One last thing: You need to test your audiences.

No, they probably won’t be perfect on the first try. Maybe you realize that 30-something female millennials need your products more than males in their 20s. It happens.

Testing is a whole other topic, but I wasn’t to bring it up. Because it’s easy to get discouraged if your audience doesn’t pick up your post immediately.

Here is a short way to test:

• Boost your post for anywhere between $1.50-$5.00.
• On Facebook, set the optimize the delivery for engagement.
• Note how fast people respond.
• On Facebook, take note of the organic vs. paid reach. If nearly all of it is paid, your content may be a problem. Some posts will generate higher organic reach due to sharing, likes, or other interactions. These posts are winners.
• The most important metrics are: Engagement (shares and comments especially), clicks, and reach.

For best results, you want to test multiple posts until you find your groove. You can test different post types, but also different audiences – but choose one of these categories to test at a time!

Any Questions?

What is your biggest challenge with social media? Let me know! 

Or get more social media advice in this interview with Desireé Duffy founder of Black Chateau Enterprises