Developing a clear understanding of your social media target audience is one of the most important things to do before starting with your marketing strategy. Your target audience informs all elements of your social media strategy going forward. 

Before we get into the details, here’s a little tip: your target audience is not everyone! But there is plenty you can do to start defining and understanding your audience and we can also help with the rest. 

Audience research will help you craft relevant content, messaging, and ads, which can lead to higher conversion rates. 

But defining a target audience can be one of the most challenging aspects of marketing. But once you have a clear idea of who they are, your marketing will be more relevant and have better returns. 

Here’s how you can start to define a target audience and reach them through social media. 

First, let’s start by understanding what a target audience actually is. It’s a group of people you want to reach with your social channels who are most likely to be interested in your product or offer. They’ll share common traits or characteristics, like demographics and behaviours. 

We’ve got three things you can do to start to find your target audience 

Compile and look at your data on your existing customers and social media audience 

You’ve got so much information already at your fingertips. If you have social channels already, there are lots of really interesting stats and facts in the analytics sections of your social media accounts. You’ll have data on who’s following you, interacting with your posts, and some demographic data. 

But don’t forget the data you have of your existing customers, who regularly buy your products or services. They might not be online, but there is plenty of offline data there.  

Look at your competition 

Odds are, your social media audience overlaps with that of your competitors. So it’s worth checking out what they’re doing so you can benefit from the lessons they’ve already learned. Are they reaching segments you hadn’t thought to consider? How are they positioning themselves? 

What is your unique point of view? 

You’ll need to make sure you have a solid understanding of how your product or service makes your audience’s life: 

• better 
• easier 
• more interesting

Does it solve their challenges? Address specific pain points? Help them meet their goals? All these questions will help you understand how your product or service helps your customers and you can start to use this as part of your marketing.  

If you want to know more about how our team can help you define your audience and develop a robust marketing strategy, just pop a message to Hannah, our client relationship manager who would be more than happy to talk you through some of our flexible marketing and social media packages. 

Pre-covid, our lives were busier than ever before, and although we knew that having an active professional network was good for us, it was difficult to make time during busy schedules. If you’re keen to make use of this extra time, this blog is for you…

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 720+ million users across 200 countries. LinkedIn can help you to build credibility, maintain your online reputation, create a meaningful network of referrals and highlight your expertise on this social media platform.

What are the different page types?

There are three different LinkedIn page types; personal profile, company page and showcase page. A personal profile is a central place for your own personal brand. It’s a great place to explain who you are, what you stand for and give a history of your professional experiences and achievements. A company page lets a practice promote its services, recruit new talent and share important, interesting and useful updates. A showcase page is an extension of your company page, designed to highlight a brand, proposition, or initiative.

Why have a LinkedIn profile?

Your LinkedIn profile is where first impressions are formed and is a chance to showcase your skills and experience amongst your peers. You should also consider adding buttons to your LinkedIn profile from your email signatures, your website and your practice website to drive traffic to your social channels. This can also provide valuable social proof for your business.

So, it’s time to spruce up your profile. Here are our three top tips to get started.

1. Update your URL

Make yourself visible and easy to remember by personalising your URL. It’s easy to do.

Go to your profile page –

● On the right hand side, select Edit public profile & URL
● You can then update the URL on the right-hand side of the page. Consider taking out the numbers which LinkedIn automatically adds when you set up your profile.

2. Complete your profile fully.

Google loves a completed profile, fill it with keywords and you’ll be found when someone searches for your name or speciality. So to get a completed profile, you’ll need to have a look at your “Profile strength meter”. The Profile Strength meter gauges how robust and complete your profile is. Once the meter is full and all prompts are complete, you’ll receive an All-Star profile rating.

So how do you find out how complete your profile is?

● Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage
● Select View profile
● Below your top card information, move your cursor over the meter to see which steps you’ve completed
● Click the Dropdown icon in the upper right corner of the meter to discover more information about the next profile strength completion step
● Follow the prompts to complete any of the steps listed

3. Get involved!

Social media is social for a reason. By engaging with content on LinkedIn, your connections or followers see this action, which builds your reputation and keeps you at the top of their mind. Engaging is as simple as liking or sharing someone else’s post which resonates with you and building a conversation. You can share your view, your experience or perspective on the topic.

Creating updates (or posts) gives a chance to showcase your expertise and knowledge. Updates are generally shorter and it is important to put the company’s position or view on the content, so readers can fully understand the brand and the differentiation. You can create longer pieces of content called articles on LinkedIn. This can allow you to write in-depth about your expertise – challenges, opportunities, important trends in your specialism. They are typically longer than posts and are limited to 125,000 characters at the moment, plus you can include images, external links and rich media.