How to Tailor Social Media to Engage with Your Target Audience
Social Media is a powerful tool for any organization, but can be rather difficult to navigate at times. The most important thing to remember is that social media is all about connecting your organization with its audience, so always keep them in mind! In order to understand social media better, the first step is to understand your target audience, which can appear differently from time to time. Here are some key reminders for your 2022 social media campaigns, and how to better connect with your audience:
1. Who is your target audience?
Your target audience varies widely depending on what your organization does and what campaigns you are implementing. It is important to balance your current audience with your potential followers, and to not neglect either group.
If you are trying to gain more followers, then boosting your posts will reach specific demographics of people that will lead to better engagement and follower retention.
2. When should you boost your posts?
Boosting and/or promoting posts looks differently depending on the platform you are using, as well as what management software you are using. Whether you are using HootSuite, Facebook Creator Studio, Sprout, or any other service, you will be able to promote posts but make sure you utilize your service’s help center or tutorials to know what to do!
Many social media analysts believe that you should boost or promote your most popular/successful posts. These posts are already organically trending with your current followers so you should capitalize on this success and use it to reach a wider audience. Always remember that your greatest success comes from organic engagement! You can also boost important posts, like fundraisers, campaigns, sales, or big announcements. Even if these posts are not trending or doing as well organically, it can still be beneficial to get in front of readers who may have missed these posts.
3. Who are important demographics?
The easiest way to figure out which audience demographics are the most relevant to your brand is by looking at who you are already engaging with. This is another component that will look different depending on which platform(s) you are using and which management software you are using too. However, you will always be able to see who your largest demographic is, based on the age, gender, occupation, and location of your audiences.
Remember to balance your organization’s physical customers with who is engaging with your posts online. If you own a craft shop in Chicago whose main clientele is women between the ages of 30-70 years old, then your followers should reflect this as well. Even if your followers are mainly men from San Francisco, it is still important to interact with this demographic in some posts while gaining more appropriate demographics in others. You never want to lose the followers you already have!
When scheduling your next boosted post, make sure to choose women in their 30’s to 70’s in the Chicago area to get in front of your new, desired, clients.
4. What should you post?
This is the best part! As the social media manager or owner of the organization, you have complete control over what gets to be posted and who should see it. You know your audience best, and you know what they interact with the most, so try to continue with that success.
While it is important to continue on your organic success, don’t be afraid to try something new! If a sale campaign from a year ago didn’t produce the results you wanted, that doesn’t mean that it may not work again in the future. Try that sales post again, but maybe play around with how you word the post or what demographics you should target. Remember to be as authentic and as transparent as possible. Customers and followers like supporting brands that are engaging and authentic, so you should publish social media posts that highlight your true and honest brand. Posts that showcase great initiatives, hardworking employees, and loyal customers will naturally do well, but also lead to more customer retention in the long run.
Lastly, and most importantly, have fun! Social media is one of the most useful things for your brand because you can interact with your audience, which means that there should be some lighthearted and fun posts. If you constantly post about informative and/or business-like posts you may lose engagement and even followers. Don’t be afraid to post a fun post on a weekend, holiday, or a random Tuesday because your followers will engage with these more often. It is still important to balance your brand’s mission and purpose with these fun posts, but don’t be afraid to do things like “Throwback Thursdays”, funny gifs on holidays, or even posts about your employees having fun at work. This fun-loving energy will benefit you in the long run!
If you have any questions about the strategies discussed above, are looking for social media management, or just have general comments please feel free to reach out!
