Social media is a big part of getting the word out about your organization. You’ve spend considerable time and effort creating content and selecting the right images to get your message across. That makes it all the more important to know who your audience is, so you will know if your messages are getting to the right people.
Identify Your Desired Audience (if you haven’t already)
First you should identify your audience or target market. Who do you want to talk to, market to, educate, etc.? Write it down and keep it for reference!
Identify your Current Audience
Social media platforms have made it much easier to figure out who your fans and followers are. Let’s talk about Facebook and Instagram specifically. There are 3rd party tools that can help you understand your audience better, but using Facebook and Instagram directly is a quick and easy way to identify your audience.
If you have a business page, the “Insights” tab should be your best friend.
Go to “Insights” across the top of your home page, then click “People” on the left-hand side of your screen.
From here you can see information on your fans including gender, age, country and city.
If you have a business profile, you can find out everything from demographics to viewing habits of your current audience.
Go to your bio page, click the three lines in the upper right-hand corner and select “Insights”.
From here you can see insights on your content, activity and audience. Find out your top locations, age range and gender, plus when your fans are online by day and hour!
Speaking to your Current Audience
If your insights show your followers are your target – congratulations!!
If your insights show that your audience is not quite who you thought they were, you can make adjustments to include them.
Adjust Your Content to Reach your Desired Audience
If your current audience is not exactly who you thought it was that is ok, but you may need to adjust your content to make sure you are speaking to the fans you have in the best way possible.
Example: You are a health care provider targeting women 30-55 and mainly post content for women 40+. After reviewing your audience, you realize the majority of your followers are 25-35. Adjusting content to appeal to the audience you have is a good plan in this case. Most likely they are mothers with younger children – content that includes information on how to treat ear aches, healthy snack recipes and promoting services such as preschool TB tests or back to school physicals would help reach your audience more effectively.
There are some instances where despite who is currently on your channels you want to continue to talk to your intended audience to prevent confusion or a large change in tone or purpose. You don’t want to abandon your current audience completely, but make slow, incremental changes to start bringing in the demographic you desire.
Example: You are a hotel and your existing social media audience is mainly locals. In this instance you would want to continue to talk to visitors (your target) and possibly add in some messages on staycations or local events for your current audience. Switching to talk to the audience you have (locals) would be confusing and off-brand but adding in specific content to include the current audience of locals would be worthwhile as you continue to build your out of town fans and followers.
If you don’t currently have the audience you want, use targeted advertising to help you reach them!
Do you have your target audience clearly defined? What metrics do you use to know that you are effectively reaching them?
