One of the key foundations of your social media strategy is a detailed customer profile that describes your target audience as an individual. To create this, you’ll research your audience members and use objective data and feedback, not just assumptions. Here is what you’ll learn about your followers on social media and how this information will help you succeed.
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 like:
– 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 is not about who your audience are, but how they think and behave. This field seeks to discover the cognitive processes that influence behavior. This is essential for any business as it determines the person’s buying behavior.
Psychographics include:
– Core values
– Attitudes toward brands and products
– Likes and preferences
– Behavior, especially in regard to businesses they interact with
– Hobbies and leisure time activities
You need to dig a bit deeper to reveal this information. You might follow your audience on social media or carry out focus groups. It’s a little tougher to gain this kind of data so pay close attention to your customers’ conversations.
Pain Points – The Challenges Your Audience Faces
An important part of your psychographic data is your customer’s pain points. These are the challenges they face, the issues they need to overcome, or the questions burning inside them. If you can offer a solution these problems through your content, you’ll build a strong relationship with them.
The best way to discover this information is to follow your audience members online. See what they post about or ask about on social media. Look at the conversations they have in online groups or comments.
Your Audience’s Social Media Preferences
By following your audience on social media, you can also learn about their preferences. You need to know what type of content they like so you can use that to engage with them. Preferences include not just topics they’re interested in, but formats they like (video or text), social media channels they use, and other social media behavior.
Best Practices for Social Media Engagement
You’ll really learn a great deal once you implement your social media strategy and get results. As you implement, you’ll monitor analytics to discover what works and what doesn’t. Every industry, every niche, every audience, and every business has its own best practices. The only way to master yours is to launch your social media strategy and put your plan into action.
Want to learn more about how you can create a detailed customer profile ?
Head over to our course Create Your Social Media Master Plan
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