It’s one thing to publish a clever social media post, but it’s quite another to have that content seen by your target audience. At the end of the day, posting on a social media platform that doesn’t host your audience is like performing spoken word poetry to an empty room, even with a large following. There are many social platforms available, so how can you tell which one is most appropriate for your business?

Some impetuous strategists like to jump on any bandwagon that trundles over the social media horizon. It’s a sound strategy, in theory – you sign up for a new platform and if it becomes huge, you were one of the frontrunners. If it fails, then no loss, right? Except you have lost, because you could have invested the time and energy elsewhere, not to mention the opportunity cost. That energy could have gone into making engaging content for more reliable marketing channels.

In this article, we’ll explore how to pin down your audience so that you can drive marketing success through your social media strategy. If you’re looking to boost your overall marketing efforts, however, have a look at our comprehensive guide on MarTech, where we recommend powerful tools that go beyond social media marketing.

But for now, let’s look into how you can identify your audience.

How do you identify your audience?

Before you can track where your audience is online, you need to know who they are. This includes demographic factors (like age, gender, social class, income levels, ethnicity and so on) and psychographic factors (like personality traits, lifestyle, habits, behaviors and interests). You should have full profiles of your potential customers set out and understand their thought processes. This will ensure you’re monitoring the right place.

Remember that your ideal audience is unique. Just because your competitors are present in particular areas of social media, it doesn’t mean you should be. That’s not to say you should ignore your competitors, of course, but don’t simply copy them. You need to find your own voice and identity.
Now that you’ve identified your audience, let’s discuss some tried and tested techniques of finding them where they reside.

Where do you find your audience?

It’s important to know where your audience is so that you can increase your social media presence in those spaces. Here are three techniques to do so, regardless of where you are in your social media journey.

Social listening

Finding your audience on social media can be done with a technique called ‘social listening’. Social listening is used by several departments that can monitor social media discussions on certain subjects, products or brands. It’s often used to identify pain points among target audiences. If you listen into the major social media platforms, you can get a sense of how many people are discussing what your business offers and, better still, get a better idea of their expectations. There are software options that can help with this, and many of them are free, such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite. In fact, social listening has several advantages brands and social media executives can use to increase engagement, but that’s another topic (goodness, aren’t we a bunch of teases?).

Social listening allows you to track conversations from your current and potential online audience. By establishing where the conversation is happening on the web, you can discover where your ‘community’ spends most of their time. It also allows you to join in that conversation to engage with those customers.

Web analytics

Perhaps most useful, however, is getting some web analytics software. At Dusted, we’re quite partial to Google Analytics but depending on your requirements, there are several alternatives you could use, such as Mixpanel, Heap, or Kissmetrics. One very helpful function of Google Analytics is the ability to track where your site visitors are coming from, be it organic searches, paid adverts or, crucially, social media posts (yours or otherwise). When you find out which social media platform is providing you with the most traffic, you can assume that this is where a majority of your audience hangs out. You can also implement a strategy to attract audiences from other social media outlets but, again, that’s another subject (not to worry, it’s coming soon, don’t panic!).

Target demographics

Of course, that only works if you are already receiving regular visits to your website. If you’re brand new and looking for your potential audience, you might want to utilise tools like The Pew Research Centre to establish demographics of different social media platforms, and Facebook Ads Manager which can estimate the size of your audience based on geographic locations and subject areas. This data, combined with social listening data, should be enough to give you an idea of where to start.

Once you’ve set up your social media account, it’s essential that you keep analysing and critiquing them to maintain maximum engagement. Don’t be afraid to explore more platforms for your social media campaign, but make those decisions based on research and evidence, not fads and whims.

Next steps for success

In this post, we’ve made one thing crystal clear: social media success hinges on understanding your audience and meeting them where they are. However, this is just a piece of the puzzle that is your marketing strategy. To unlock the full picture, we recommend that you also check out the following articles:

Or, if you need expert help in supercharging your social, check us out!

Dusted is a specialist digital and brand agency. We work with some of the most ambitious businesses in the world, blending strategy, creativity and technology to solve their marketing challenges. Our team of talented creatives and technical analysts produce original, measurable and successful social media campaigns to drive significant influence and engagement. Get in touch today to unlock your social media potential!