How to identify your social media target audience

By Joan Stewart

Don’t jump head-first into social media without first identifying your target audience.

If you miss this critical step, you could end up wasting a lot of time and energy by reaching out to people who aren’t interested in what you have to say.

The My Creative Team blog suggests you ask several questions that can help you pinpoint the kinds of people who will be open to your message. In addition to their questions, here are some of our own. If you have different target markets for different products and services, you may want to run through this list of questions for each target market.

• What are the top three problems your target market struggles with?
    
• Of those three, which one keeps most people up at 3 a.m.?
      
• What magazines, newspapers and print and online newsletters do they read?
      
• What TV shows do they watch, and what radio shows do they listen to?
      
• Do they listen to shows on BlogTalkRadio? If so, which ones?
        
• What blogs are their favorites?
      
• Do they follow or buy from your competitors? If so, who? 
        
• Which discussion forums do they participate in?
      
• How old are they?
      
• Where do they live?  
        
• What controversial topics are they interested in?

At a seminar I attended,  Perry Marshall, one of my coaches, said that you should know your target audience so well that you should be able to write an entry as it would appear in someone’s daily journal.   

Here’s a good starting point for identifying your target market. If you’re not sure about the answers to any of the questions above, ask. If you own a bricks-and-mortar store, talk to your customers. If you business online, ask the question at your website or blog. Once you get the answers to your questions, keep asking!

What other questions do you ask yourself to identify your ideal audience? Or what’s puzzling you about how to identify it?