If you want social media success, the most important thing to focus on is your audience. It is very tempting to focus your content on what you want to tell people. But if you instead shift that to what they want to hear, you are likely to achieve so much more success.
But how do we know what our audience wants from us on social media?
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CREATE A PERSONA
Write down every detail you can possibly think of in relation to your target audience (and remember if you’re B2B, your audience is not a business. It’s people within the business). Drill down to age, location, gender, job role, family, education, industry, what makes them laugh, what are they worried about, what challenges them, what do they read, what are they interested in, what do they want to learn, and anything else you can possibly think of!!!
Grab yourself a big piece of paper and write down everything. Then create a persona from this. In other words, take it from being a huge audience to being one person. You can even give them a name! If it’s tricky to make just one persona, you can make a few. But try to avoid having any more than 5. Each time you create content, have this ‘person’ in mind.
2. SPEAK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
I’m sure you’re trying to attract people that are similar to your customers to follow you on social media. So, speak to your customers. If you have regular conversations with your customers, ask them about their social media use and what they would like to see from you on social media. Ask them to give you honest feedback on your current activity and whether they can relate to it.
3. RUN A SURVEY
You can ask questions on social media directly to get some feedback from your audience. You can also run a more in-depth survey to gain a better understanding of what might appeal to your audience. Free tools like Survey Monkey will allow you to email a survey or share the link on social media. You could incentivise the survey with a prize draw to increase response. Ask questions like which platforms they use and the type of content they like to see (top tip: don’t leave this open ended. Instead give multiple choice responses so you don’t end up with lots of different answers!).
4. LET THEM TELL YOU
But by the far the easiest and most effective way of understanding what your audience wants on social media is to let them tell you. And they do this by engaging, or not engaging, with your content. Each platform gives you insights and analytics behind each of your posts. At the end of every week, look at how much engagement you have had for each of your posts. Likes, comments and shares typically suggest that your audience is interested in that content. If you don’t get as much engagement for a post, it is likely this is due to them not being as interested. This will give you an idea of what your audience wants to see from you.
Pay attention to overall themes. For example, if you get more engagement for videos rather than images. Or if you get more comments on images with people in rather than products. Do more of what gets you the most engagement, and less of what gets you the least!!
So, what does your audience want? If you don’t know, it’s time to start figuring it out!
