A cornerstone of your social media strategy is a customer profile that tells the story of each individual who makes up your target audience. This requires research, generating real insight from what is being said, and tapping into the ideas, encounters and needs behind the words. Here is what you’ll learn about your followers on social media and how this information will help you succeed.
In this article:
- Demographics – Who Your Audience Is
- Psychographics – Your Audience’s Beliefs and Lifestyle
- Pain Points – The Challenges Your Audience Faces
- Your Audience’s Social Media Preferences
- Best Practices for Social Media Engagement
Demographics – Who Your Audience Is
The first thing you learn is your audience’s demographics. This data answers the question, “Who are they.” It includes information such as:
- Age
- Geographical location
- Language
- Gender
- Marital status
- Education level
- Income level
Include whatever other information you feel might be relevant as well. Most of this data can be obtained by looking at social media profiles.
Psychographics – Your Audience’s Beliefs and Lifestyle
Psychographic data focuses on understanding the mechanisms of the brain and the behaviour of the customers. The processes that influence the decision-making pattern of the customer are observed and it helps in knowing the reason for making a purchase decision by the customer.
Psychographics include:
- Core values
- Attitudes toward brands and products
- Likes and preferences
- Behaviour, especially in regard to businesses they interact with
- Hobbies and leisure time activities
You need to dig a little deeper and more resourcefully to discover this. You will follow your audience’s conversations about your products on social media or perhaps carry out focus groups, which can be extremely tough to acquire but even better results.
Pain Points – The Challenges Your Audience Faces
One very important part of your psychographic data is the customer’s pain points. Pain points are challenges your customers face, issues needed overcoming, or the questions they need answers to. If you can offer some solutions to these problems through your content, you will build a strong relationship with that individual customer.
The best way to find this information is to follow them online. Observe what they post or ask on social media. Check the conversations they have in online groups or comments.
Your Audience’s Social Media Preferences
Following your audience online will help you learn about your audience preferences. It’s important to know the type of content they like so you can use it to engage further with them. This is more than just including topics they’re interested in, but formats they like (video or text), channels they use, and other social media behaviour.
Best Practices for Social Media Engagement
Once you implement your social media strategy, you’ll see that there’s a great deal to learn from analytics. Every industry has different practices and every audience and every business has its own best practices.
The only way to master your strategy is to launch it and put it into action. If you don’t, then it’s likely that you will never ever do it no matter what. So launch it and do it!
