We briefly touched on exploring social networks and discovering
your audience in parts one and two of the social media recipe for success
sequel but, we know that the myth of being active on hundreds of platforms
rather than being really successful on a few targeted ones is an important
issue.
The aim of social media is to connect directly with an audience
in a timely, unique and engaging manner allowing them the opportunity to get to
know the brand personality further and truly communicate in a way that means
something to audience members. We are often baffled when clients want to be
active on every social media platform they've ever heard of when they're either
not using the 'power three' correctly as it is or their audience simply aren't
on many platforms. Here's a few steps to ensure you're on the right path for
your brand...
Step One: Who?
Who is your social media target audience? A good place to start
is by looking at your brand's target audience and going from there. The social
media target audience will be different to your usual customers in most cases;
they will be more defined and probably different on each network.
It's also a good idea to think about which type of person you
aspire to have as part of your social media community. We've seen some brands
end up with poor social media success after focusing on who their current
audience is, many of which aren't on social, as opposed to who they'd like to
be communicating with online.
In order to identify who your social media target's personality
is delve deeper and think about what online media sources they like to read,
which brands they love and even which celebrities and high-profile people they
follow. Start to research into your ideal target and everything around them
online to build up a fully-rounded picture.
Step Two: Where?
You know who you want to be targeting but now... Where are they!?
Of course, the majority of people from all walks of life will be active on the
'power three'; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Here's a few key stats for you...
- There are 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users with over 223 million people on Facebook in Europe
- Facebook's most common age demographic is age 25 to 34 and 53% are female and 47% male
- Twitter's primary age demographic are users aged between 18 and 29
- Users tend to use Twitter for news consumption, 83% reported seeing news on the platform
- YouTube's users are split equally between male and female and 46% are under 18 years of age
- YouTube is the third biggest driver of traffic to websites after Facebook and Stumbleupon
If they are right for your brand, these three are a good place to
start to build up your online presence and to learn how to make social media
work for you but, the new guys need to come in somewhere too - if they are
where your target audience are active on of course, remember quality over
quantity!
- Within internet users, Pinterest is now more popular than Twitter!
- Pinterest attracts older people - 23% of internet users aged 50+ use Pinterest
- Instagram has over 150 million users with 90% being under 35 years old and 68% of users are female
- Instagram is one of the most engaged networks with about 60% of users logging in on a daily basis
- 300 million people use LinkedIn and its key audience are aged between 30 and 49 years old with a high income and education
- 40% of users check into LinkedIn daily and spend 17 minutes on the site per month
Step Three: Why?
We always say how important setting objectives are so that you
know where you want to be online as a brand and can set mini-goals to get there
but, looking into objectives further, setting defined objectives for each of
your audience segments and also objectives for each of your platforms.
For example, you may have identified parents aged between 30 and
40 as one of your target audiences for your Facebook page - a goal may be to
recruit some of these users as ambassadors in six months time in order to do
that your objectives for this target audience and platform could be...
1.
Create an engaged community of 1000 Facebook
fans with 5% engagement rates within two months
2.
Identify potential ambassadors within four
months through daily contact with fans, frequent questions put to fans and research
into key influencers
As with all goals whether they are being set for social media or
not, they need to be SMART; specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and
time-related.
Take a look at our previous two blog posts that accompany this
success series or click on the right for all our social media posts.
Happy planning!
Jane x
Take our online Facebook eCourse to plan your first social media strategy here.
Download our handy social media toolkits here.
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