Every entrepreneur knows by now what social media is and how important it is for your company. But how do you use social media to appeal to your target audience? If you use social media as a marketing tool, you need to be able to look at yourself critically. Think carefully about how you approach it, as it requires quite a time investment.
Research by research firm Newcom Research reveals the following trends in 2018. Instagram is growing fast among all age groups (4.1 million users). This growth is greatest among young people up to 19 years old. 73% of them use Instagram. In the 20-39 age group, it is 46% and for the 40-64 age group, 22%. Among the over-65s, 9% use Instagram. Interest in Facebook has declined among young people, but still holds a strong position in the age category 20 and older. In particular, young people up to 19 years old are increasingly abandoning Facebook. YouTube is still big, but not as big as WhatsApp.
Persona
If you decide to deploy social media, mapping your target group is mega important. How do you know on which social media your target group is active? To map your target group, it is useful to imagine a persona, or ideal customer. A persona is a very detailed description of a user of your product or service. Create a fictional person and give them characteristics, interests and geographical data. For example, use information from Google Analytics to see what characteristics your website visitors have. You can also assign these to the persona. In this way, you gain in-depth knowledge about your target group and you can better put yourself in your audience's shoes. Based on the demographic characteristics, you can start reaching the target group on social media.
An example of a persona for Monkey Vision: Emilio is 22 years old, lives in London and has completed his HBO degree in Event Management. He prefers to arrange everything online such as ordering his clothes and is on social media every day. He works part-time at an events agency where he also did an internship. Ideally, he would like to see his own business in the future where he can organise his own events. Lately, he has been doing some research on this via the internet. He also likes going out with his friends and gaming.
Interaction on social media
It is important to stop using social media as a one-way channel. Social media is a perfect way to create more engagement by engaging with your target audience. That way, (potential) customers get to see a positive image of your company. If your company is actively involved, this ensures that your followers will continue to follow you, and will be interested in the messages you post. So use social media to start the conversation. Find out what is going on in your target audience and try to respond accordingly. However, do not bombard your followers flat with your posts. In this case, quality is more important than quantity. Also think about when you publish a post.
Want to know the best time for a social post? Then read our Tip of the Week - Best time for a social post.
Tone of voice
Think carefully about which tone of voice you deploy on social media. The conversational human voice, or human tone, seems to have the best effect on customer relations. It is a friendly, informal style of communicating online. Bringing out a human tone in your message, can help give you more engagement and a better reputation. So it is not useful to address your target audience with jargon or managerial language now that everyone on social media is already used to communicating in an informal tone.
Social media promotions
A win campaign can help you reach your target audience. Just make sure the message exudes enthusiasm rather than irritation. There are so many like, share and win actions these days. The promotion should be clear and simple. Choose relevant prices. By researching your target group's interests, you know what is on their minds. Link that information to your product or service so choose a price.
Put the winner in the spotlight afterwards and send all participants an e-mail with the outcome of the action. You can put the data you collected during the competition to good use. Use them for a newsletter or a retargeting campaign, for instance.
Would you like to know which ads on Facebook you can best use to reach your target group? Then read our Tip of the Week - Advertising on Facebook.
Visuele content en variatie
A popular trend in social media is the use of visual content. To generate interaction, it is better to post images rather than long stories on Facebook, for example. Just make sure the visual content is relevant and attractive. Think product photos, infographics or, for example, team photos.
Read more about content creation in our blog Successful Online - Content.
Make sure you are varied in the content you post. If you keep posting the same thing over and over again, your target audience will get bored. Tap into current events and ask questions of your followers. Be creative.
Reviews
Don't just use social media to push offers and promotions anymore. Social media is also incredibly important to amplify the voice of your customers. Customer reviews work mega well in social media and can convince a customer to buy a service or product.
