Understanding Your Audience: A #BufferChat Recap
This week on #bufferchat, our community talked all about understanding your social media audience, everything from tools to strategies and best practices. With Twitter moving to 280 characters, we switched from seven questions to six to have more time for conversation.
Read on to discover all of the awesome insights shared during the chat!
Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and to meet hundreds of other smart marketers and social media enthusiasts. Same topic, same place, just at different times – feel free to join in to whichever chat time works best for you!
4 pm AEST (Sydney time)
9 am PT (San Francisco time)
This week’s stats:
Bufferchat #1 (4 pm AEST): 22 participants; reach of 924,442
Bufferchat #2 (9 am PT): 66 participants; reach of 1,180,287
Q1: What’s the first step you take in finding out who your audience is on social media?
From the community:
A1: Ask them.
Publish content and see who responded, then ask for opinion or Join groups in the area of your expertise, and ask the audience what do they like #bufferchat
— Benny Gelbendorf (@BGelbendorf) November 15, 2017
A1: Our team has built buyer personas to help guide our content for different platforms; however, I personally like to sort through our followers. I read their bios and look through their profiles for clues to what they like. #bufferchat
— Joanna Easley (@jo_easley) November 15, 2017
#bufferchat A1: Twitter & Facebook native analytics give a solid starting point; Instagram is a bit more challenging. But, it never hurts to just click on ‘followers’ and spend a little time scrolling- you never know who you’ll find in there.
— Anthony ManĐelli (@Mandelliant) November 15, 2017
A1: #Bufferchat So I think we need to make a distinction between who they are currently and who you need them to be. Current audience first step is look at your analytics. Ideal audience look at your business objectives. pic.twitter.com/zIsnf204ao
— Elizabeth Somerville (@ElizabethKF) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 1 here!
Q2: What tools are helpful in discovering your audience on social media?
From the community:
A2:) so many tools so little characters ?
– @keyholeco for hashtags
– @BuzzSumo for content and influences
– @feedly for the interesting topics in the field
-Native tools are great indicators to be honest not just in audience yet in the type of content that works #bufferchat
— Fouad (@fouad_khafaga) November 15, 2017
#bufferchat A2: I love to ask friends who ARE the audience and then find keyword targeting with Keyword Planner or go further and use my noggin
— Laura Bauman (@laura_bauman) November 15, 2017
A2.
Tools for
discovering… ?
your
social audience:
?? Buffer
?? Buzzsumo
?? Built-in analytics
-Twitter analytics
-FB insights
-IG insights
?? Advanced search + search
?? Engage w/ them#bufferchat
— Gabriela Cardoza (@CardozaGab) November 15, 2017
A2: Twitter Chats. Facebook Groups. Not tools per se but looking in the right direction. #bufferchat
— Chandresh (@thisischandresh) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 2 here!
Q3: What are some of the most important data points that you want to find out about your audience?
From the community:
A3: Their needs! Doing the qualitative research to find out what they want is imperative. We often use call monitoring to find out the right verbiage, for instance. No one know what your customers need better than them. #bufferchat https://t.co/58NXZBYVhw
— Mad Fish Digital (@MadFishDigital) November 15, 2017
A3: It all comes down to engagement. I want to know what my audience cares about and will engage with. Likes, shares, comments, retweets… whatever it may be. It helps you grow your audience, but more importantly it helps you create more targeted content. #bufferchat
— Anna Taylor (@annactaylor15) November 15, 2017
A3: Who they are, what do they like and, perhaps, more importantly – what they don’t like. On many occasions, that has been more valuable than anything. #bufferchat
— Daylight Studio (@daylightstudio) November 15, 2017
A3 Overall engagement is and quantifying some of the social media verbatims are insightful. They help generate content ideas or help me figure out ways to address pain points or common questions/themes. #bufferchat
— Nancy Casanova (@nancycasanova) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 3 here!
Q4: Does your audience vary widely on different social media platforms?
From the community:
A4: Yes, hugely! Twitter is a more professional audience, Instagram younger, Facebook more engaged #bufferchat
— Laura Kemp (@L_E_Kemp) November 15, 2017
A4. Depends on the brand I’m working on. Most times, B2C brands tend to have an overlap of audience across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On the other hand, B2B brands audience profiles differ across the popular social media platforms. #bufferchat
— Ankitaa G Dalmia (@Anki_Live) November 15, 2017
A4: So far no. We have seen that Twitter is more of a peer-focused platform and Instagram has been more of a client-focused platform. We try to balance intentionality with organic growth so our analysis of our audience is the most accurate. #bufferchat
— Joanna Easley (@jo_easley) November 15, 2017
A4 If your audience varies VERY widely based on social platform… then your tone/content must not be uniform.
There’s no reason to be on every platform. If your ideal client is 50+, don’t try to cultivate a following on Snapchat – focus on ones like Fb. #bufferchat
— Eric Sachs (@EricSachs_SEO) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 4 here!
Q5: How can learning about your audience guide your social media strategy?
From the community:
A5: Our ultimate goal is to make our customer’s life + business better. The more we know about them, the better we can serve them. #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/xPfJaH4ojX
— Junction 32 (@JCT32Team) November 15, 2017
A5: One of the best parts about understanding your audience is the new opportunities that come to the surface. Did you know your audience is active in a FB group? Subreddit? Forum? Quora thread? All of this can be found through research! #bufferchat
— Crate (@CrateTeam) November 15, 2017
A5.
It’s literally the most important thing you’ll do.
Know what they value,
why they’re on social media,
and let it lead your strategy.#bufferchat pic.twitter.com/didwrlLK59
— Tori Dunlap | Career, Travel, Finance, Digital (@victori_media) November 15, 2017
A5: It’s dangerous if we stop learning. Their goals define why/what/how we create content and build engagement on Social Media. Misconceptions can result in colossal waste of time. Strategy is a by product of empathy. #BufferChat
— Tejaswi Raghurama (@Tejazz89) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 5 here!
Q6: Have you learned anything surprising after researching your audience on social media?
From the community:
A6: Treat your audience like a compass that’ll guide your social media strategy. #bufferchat
— Maria Marchewka (@_MariaMarchewka) November 15, 2017
A6: #BufferChat. The languages spoken by our social media audiences are very different to the languages spoken in the UK as a whole. E.g. loads of Spanish speakers on our social media, whereas Welsh and Polish are the most commonly spoken languages here after English. pic.twitter.com/ZGZlZvqHi3
— Elizabeth Somerville (@ElizabethKF) November 15, 2017
A6: Ideal timing of posts, for sure. That one’s like throwing darts blind sometimes, but when you hit on something done correctly, it’s exciting. #bufferchat
— Megan Dunbar (@meganleedunbar) November 15, 2017
A6 Not quite surprising, more like a little unnexpected: The power of dark humor in little doses is amazing! I know its not everyone’s cup of tea but our results were baffling compared to other campaigns #bufferchat
— Diana Pereira (@DianaPereiraC) November 15, 2017
See all the great answers to question 6 here!
Thank you so much to our awesome community for sharing such great insights in this chat!
Do you have any comments or answers to these questions? Leave your thoughts in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!
Image sources: UnSplash