Social Media Optimization – Decide on Target Audience
As part of the Social Media Optimization blog, I had listed the first and foremost activity for an enterprise is to decide on the target audience in Social Media. This foremost activity will help an enterprise to put in place the platform required to gather insightful knowledge from social media to improve/retain the business.
There are lot of people performing many activities on social media or social networking sites. The activities varies from criticizing a product/ service to expressing feelings about certain events they have come across or experienced, to just watching what is happening around the world. So how do the enterprises target their audience? Before we answer this question we need to understand the types of activities people do in Social Media. The types of activities can be categorized as follows -
1. Content Creators/ Publishers – People who are interested in creating contents like blogs, videos and audios related to topics of interests that they would like to publish. These people are active and would publish content on periodic basis. Their interest is more towards socializing their opinions and would try to influence within social media.
2. Content Aggregators – These are people who would tap the social resources like friends, websites, forums and topics to gather information related to certain specific topic. Once the data from social sites/friends are gathered, they are converted into new information. The purpose is to share information with others on the social media. Their activities are based on certain real life events. These are people who would like to make new meanings out of the existing information.
3. Content Critics – As the name suggests, the intention of these types of people is to critic the existing content related to topics of discussion (product/ service / events/ etc). These people will also provide ideas for improvement on the topics of discussion.
4. Content Watchers – These are people who are not active contributors in social media, however they would like to get all information/ happenings on the social media. They sparingly use the social media for contribution however us them for getting news and feedbacks from social media.
5. New to Social Media – These are people who have just joined social sites like facebook, twitter, etc. with limited profiles. They are people who would like to understand and start using social media.
However on practical terms, people use social media in a combination of one or more of the above categories.
Enterprises have to understand who their target audiences are from the above categories and develop their strategies accordingly. For example, if the target audiences are of ‘Content Creators’ type, enterprises have to create a platform/ online environment, where the users (‘Content Creators’) are able to create contents related to the topics of the enterprises. As these type of users are influencers in social media, the responses/communication from enterprises to the users should be transparent about the topic (Products/ services/ events / etc.). As a strategy, over a period of time, the communication between the enterprises and the ‘Content Creators’ should start converting them into strong loyalists or supporters.
Similarly for other types of users, enterprises have to evolve strategies based on the business needs and objectives.
The following example will provide a snapshot of business objectives mapping the types of users towards which strategies primarily need to be evolved by enterprises -
| Business Objectives | Types of User Activities |
| Branding/ Marketing | Content Creators |
| Sales | Content Watchers, Content Critics, New to Social Media |
| Co-Creation | Content Creators, Content Aggregators, Content Critics |
| Customer Support | Content Critics |
The above method of mapping and strategizing will help the enterprises to decide on the target audiences within Social Media.
Social media marketing is the effective tool to promote your business tactics. Social media can engage the public, to increase online visibility, helping to create their own brand awareness, advertising
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