Social media use continues to grow tremendously with 2.32 billion monthly users on Facebook, over 1 billion users on Instagram, and 321 million active on Twitter.[1] There is great potential to grow your organization’s following through social media use, but don’t just post blindly. Use these strategic steps to begin effectively reaching your target audience on various social media platforms.
1. Define your Audience
Make sure you know who you want to specifically reach. Too often, we go crazy posting everything everywhere, hoping that it will reach everyone. Instead, define who you want to reach before you waste your time with ineffective posts. One easy way to do this is by creating a target audience persona [2]. A good place to start with your persona is by defining your target age, gender, and lifestyle interests.
2. Know Where your Audience Is
After you have defined who you want to target, consider social media trends and statistics so you know where to reach your audience. Out of all the different social media platforms, the most popular are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, with women consistently using all platforms more often than men.
3. Target your Audience
Once you have defined who your audience is and the platforms they’re using, you can begin to curate targeted content. Make sure to consider your audience’s general lifestyle and interests when curating content to be sure it sparks their interest! If you are trying to attract more college-aged students to your church, you’ll want to create more modern looking posts for Instagram. If you want to attract older adults to attend your conference, spend a little more time on Facebook. A great idea is to post real images of people that look like your target audience to attract them to joining a community like them.
You don’t want any information to slip through the cracks, so you may be tempted to post everything, everywhere, without change. It is ok to post the same information across all platforms but be sure to switch things up a bit. Twitter is great for short pieces of quick information, Instagram is better for visuals, Facebook seems to be a platform that can do it all, and YouTube features videos. By varying your content to the demographics and interests of your audience, you will begin to see higher retention, following, and engagements.
[1] https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-statistics-for-social-media-managers/