Knowing your audience is the key to success in any type of marketing strategy. If you know who you are trying to target, you have a better idea of how to go about structuring a plan of action to entice customers to purchase your products or services. Social media plays a big part of that in our day and age, but how do you know which social media platforms to use? How do you target a particular demographic and tailor your message accordingly? This is where understanding social media personas becomes imperative.
What Are Social Media Personas?
Each social media platform targets many different people, but typically one or more very specific types of people in the world use one over the other. One way to understand exactly who these people are is to constantly monitor the demographic data provided by each social media. That data alone really won’t lend to your business’ success, you have to take it one step further. One strategy to help you succeed on social media is by studying the demographic data, and then extrapolating the information in order to create a fictitious person who will represent each social media platform as a whole. We can give this person a name, background story, age, gender, career, and even a financial profile. This gives us a better understanding of who exactly uses Twitter vs Facebook vs, Instagram, and so forth. Then we can better assess which platforms will work the hardest for our business based on our target market and the social media personas we just created.
Once you have the personas nailed down, you should become very familiar with each one so that you can speak directly to them when you create content to be posted. This content will be tailored specifically for that persona in all aspects such as the approach, tone, structure, and even subject matter. You wouldn’t converse with a middle-aged doctor the same way you would speak to a high school senior interested in going to technical school for auto mechanics. They each have their own history, likes and interests, and will be using their social media platform of choice to do very different things. This means that if your Facebook persona is a female in her late 40s who has teenage kids in high school, has a full time job as an accountant, and makes a decent living, you would have to write in a way that would connect with her. You would never want to post the same thing you posted on Facebook on Tumblr, for example, because Tumblr is essentially a 17 year old boy posting funny pictures or sharing celebrity gossip stories. If this 17 year old boy is still within your demographics range then you would still want to use Tumblr as a social media avenue, but speak in his language and use imagery that will entice him to purchase your product or service.
Transforming Numbers Into Emotions
There are specific types of data from the demographics that you need in order to create accurate personas like ethnicity, income, gender, age, and so on, however, these alone aren’t enough. If you simply create social media personas based on generic demographic facts and figures, nothing of worth will come of it. You have to think of these personas as actual people. Think about the minutia that makes you who you are and your friends who they are. Create dynamic personality profiles and make them feel real to you by tying the persona to someone you know who is similar. Each one will have their own quirks and personalities.
Once you start speaking to these personas directly on your social media platforms you will be astonished at how quickly you begin to get engagement. Social engagement is just as important as a sale. If the user can engage and interact with your business, they are more likely to bond with your product and service and stay loyal.