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A Guide on Getting to Know Your Audience Using Social Media

How can you improve on your social media marketing efforts when you don’t know who your customers are or where they spend their time? If you find yourself struggling with making a connection on your social platforms, here’s a guide on getting to know your audience using social media:

 

Ask “Who is my customer?”

Who does your brand cater to? Is it solely for women? Or is it a brand for men? Do you cater to women with children or women who are single? Knowing the answers to questions like these will guide you in finding an audience who will react well to what you have to offer.

 

Know how big your audience is

Having a good idea of how big your target audience is helps a lot. Why is that? For one, if your audience size is too small, you might want to expand your offering to increase your audience. On the other hand, if your audience size is too big, you might want to narrow it down. After all, being specific has helped many businesses, especially when they are just starting out.

 

One of the tools you can use to know your audience size is Facebook Ads Manager. Let’s say your audience is women who live in Manchester who are interested in cooking. Through that tool, you can estimate just how big your audience is. Yes, it might be just in Facebook but at least you have a sample size to work with.

 

Send out a survey to your audience

You can never tell what’s going on in a person’s mind. This is why it’s always best to ask them. And this concept works well with business too. How else will you know how to improve your services if not from customer feedback? Listening to customers has proven beneficial for businesses and you should do the same.

 

How will you know how to optimize your social media campaign if you don’t know where your audience is? This is the purpose of sending out a survey so you have an idea where they hang out. You can send out questions such as:

 

• What are the social media platforms you frequently use?
• What websites do you visit to get information on [what your business is about. For example, books.]
• What blogs do you read on a regular basis?
• What are the podcasts you listen to, if any?
• Who do you follow online for information?

 

Surveys are not even hard to make these days. Free tools such as SurveyMoney and Google Forms make the process very easy.

 

Read up on social media reports

The Pew Research Center is a good source of reports on internet and technology. The organization has published a report on how people spend time online. Based on that data, you have an idea of how to interact with your audience.

 

Listen to your audience then interact with them

Twitter lists are a good way to listen to your audience and find out what interests them at the moment. You can use Twitter’s ad platform to search for your audience using geography, gender, keywords and such. For instance, if you’re a bookstore, you can curate a list of book lovers within your area. From there, you can gain information on what they want.

 

For example, a lot of those in the list are looking forward to the new Stephen King book. You can use that information to stock up on the book, advertise that you have it and hopefully that will result in sales.

 

Knowing your audience is essential in running a social media campaign, and hopefully these tips can help you out.