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  Social media marketers always want to be sure that they’re reaching the right audience. If they are getting through to their targets, they stand a better chance of succeeding with their marketing campaigns. But if they aren’t connecting with their ideal audience, their resource spends and exertions could be in vain.
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But how do you find that demographic you’re seeking to reach on social media? That’s the question we’ll answer in this article. First, let’s summarize what we mean by a ‘target audience’.

What Is A Target Audience?

In marketing, a target audience is a category of people who a business or organization wants to reach with its message or products. These people have specific demographic, behavioural, aspirational, or preferential characteristics in common, all of which may combine to make them the perfect market for an organization’s offerings. For example, detergents typically market to mothers; that’s their target audience. Video game makers are often reaching out to younger people. And wealth management companies want to engage adult income earners. These are fairly well-defined audiences. In simple terms, your target audience should be people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to say or the product or service you’re presenting to the public.

Steps To Finding Your Target Audience On Social Media

You can follow these steps to find your target audience on social media.

Define Your Audience

This is the first thing you should do. Unless you know who you’re looking for in the first place, you won’t be able to find them. You can do this by creating a ‘persona’ of the typical person in that audience. In order words, describe the average person in that group. Think about their age group, income levels, where they live, their gender, interests, cultural affinities, and other important details that define their personality. These characteristics will help you both in locating the people who possess them and in fashioning content that will appeal to them.

Use Their Favorite Platform

You will find your target audience in the places where they’re likely to congregate. This is as true for the world of glass and concrete as it is for social media. Establish a presence on the social media outlets that they might be using more. Older people may be found on Facebook; younger, information-seeking folks are easier to locate on Twitter; B2B marketing is most fruitful on LinkedIn.
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If you’re not sure which platform you should direct your energies to, you could survey your existing customers to find out which networks they use more often.

Post Engaging Content

Having worked out what your target audience’s tendencies are, try to craft and share content that speaks to their sensibilities. You won’t always get this right from the start. Look at their reaction to individual posts, and put up more of the kind of material that they seem to like.  If you’re engaging them effectively, they will stick with you.

Collect And Analyze User Metrics

Thankfully, social media platforms give you some useful insights into your audience’s activity. Learn what you can from these data, and find out how successful you’ve been at engaging the people you want to reach.

Work With Feedback

Appreciate feedback when you get it, whether it’s positive or critical. Sometimes the feedback lies in what isn’t being said. Collect the comments, derive useful insights from them, and implement changes to your strategy if it’s clear that you need to do so.

Final Words

The success or failure of many social media campaigns has come down to finding the right audience for their messaging. Hopefully, you’ll take on the tips we’ve shared here and attract the demographic you’ve always wanted to connect with. Feature Image Source: InfoWorld
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This article was first published on 24th March 2021

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.


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