Danae Moksnes
With so many social media sites and trends changing daily, you have to find ways to stay relevant to your target audience. But, understanding your online audience doesn’t have to be a daunting task.
To grow your following, you can post at times your audience is normally online, and target content towards their trending interests. But, how do you know your audience’s habits? What is the best way to conduct online audience research? We will show you ways to get started on audience research, and how to find your target audience online.
Identify Your Demographic
To first find your audience online, you have to identify your demographic. A demographic is the population of people you wish to appeal to. Consider your ideal customer’s average age, where they live, their interests, and even hobbies. As you identify your demographic, you can create content that appeals to them. Speak in a tone that your ideal customer would respond to, and post content your demographic commonly shows interest in.
Post content on your own website and multiple social media sites. Then, you can use free research tools to gather information about your current audience.
Start With Your Website
Before you get overwhelmed with researching your audience, narrow down your research to your website. Your website is the key place people will learn more about you and your company. That’s why gathering data on your website’s audience is the perfect first start.
Use Google Analytics to better understand your website’s audience. Google Analytics is a free tool that provides insight into your audience’s habits. Google Analytics will show you what pages your audience visits, where your audience is from, and what time of day they visit your site.
Use Google Analytics information to track which pages get the most views, and which posts don’t perform as well. From this, you can curate content around your audience’s preferences. You can also post more content on the times your audience shows to be most active.
Then, Move to Social Media
As you post content, be sure to make the most out of each social media platform. Post pictures on Instagram, post updates on Facebook, and share tweets on Twitter! Even Pinterest is a great place to reach your audience. Each site’s analytics are different, but you can count on each of them to show your audience’s demographic, and what they engage with the most.
Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is a way for everyday Facebook users to see how their content is performing. Facebook Insights are different than Facebook analytics, as Facebook analytics is used to research paid advertising and promotions.
Facebook Insight’s dashboard will show you everything you need to know about your content. The most interesting feature is Facebook insight’s Reach. Here, you can see how many people hide your page, report it as spam, or unlike your posts. This can show you what content drives people away from your page so that you know what content you may need less of.
Twitter Analytics
No matter your following on Twitter, you can access your Twitter Analytics for free. Your Twitter analytics dashboard will show an overview of your content from the last 28 days.
Twitter analytics will show your activity (how many tweets per day, and how many people see them), and key features on your audience. Twitter will also gather information on your audience’s demographic such as their age, gender, and even hobbies!
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest analytics provides a unique insight into your audience. Your Pinterest analytics will show you the basics of how many people see your posts, how many click on, and how many repin your content.
The most interesting feature in Pinterest analytics is the All-Time feature. All-Time will give you an overview of your most repinned pins, which of your pins show at the top of people’s searches, and “Power Pins” or pis that gained the most interaction. With this data, you can find out what people on Pinterest are drawn towards, and what people search for to find your pins.
Interact With Your Target Audience
Don’t forget to interact with your audience as you post on these social media sites. As you respond to comments and ask them questions, you’ll gain a more personal understanding of your audience’s habits and preferences.
You can also make use of audience surveys! Create a questionnaire on your website for your audience to fill out. You can ask questions as general as their age, or as specific as to their favorite music genre. Any information is valuable as you curate specific content for them.
Wrapping Up
As you get used to social media analytics, you can upgrade your research processes. There are many social media resource tools you can pay for to get in-depth research. However, gaining an overview of your target audience, and understanding their habit is free and doable on a multitude of social media sites. These research tools are your first steps to understanding your audience’s online habits and will help you grow your following.
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