Social Media Series: How important is it to understand the audience. We say crucial

In this article Part 2 of 6, we will explore understanding different kinds of audiences and generating content that is relevant to each category. We will look at what is the content that is most relevant to them and how do you combine self-promotion with a content stream that is of interest to your audience.

1. Your Low-Hanging Fruit

Every kind of business has its own share of low-hanging fruit—the easiest audiences to woo, or your first 1000 followers. For a restaurant in a business district, the low-hanging fruit is the local office goer during lunch hours. For a tech startup with a new app it is the early adopters who follow technology blogs on a daily basis and being up-to-date on the latest trends is their religion. The content for the low-hanging reward is designed purely as immediate gratification.

2. The Secondary Realm

For the restaurant in the business district the secondary audience would be the family crowd for dinner time. For the conservation NGO it may be the eco-conscious youth, the activist hipsters and the scientific community. For the app startup it would be the friends and family around the early adopters of their app. Here the content can also be immediate gratification, but may also just be just awareness.

3. The Invisible Audience



Sometimes an audience is not obvious, but the organisation needs them to scale. They are not the core audience for your social media content, however they will buy your organisation’s services, depending on your engagement with your broader audience. For example with a festival— sponsors are interested in seeing that your content is engaging the broader ticket-buying audience. Even if people don’t buy tickets, they still want to know what is happening at their festival and will devour photos, graphics and videos. This audience can be anywhere between 10 to a 100 fold the size of even the festival attendance.

Bonus for Reader: Who are your Low-Hanging fruits, Secondary and Invisible audience? If you are not sure, tell us about your business in the comments below and our team may be able to help you right here.

4. The Mix

A good thumb rule is to focus on your low hanging fruit for the first 1000 followers, regardless of what your business. Once you cross 1000 followers, introduce content for the second realm. After 10,000 followers it is time to start thinking about your invisible audience, in case this applies to your business.

5. The Menu of Content

The general menu of content that is possible is vast. However here are some to give you a reference to come back to and remind you when you content plan stagnates: Events like festivals and cricket matches; Promotions like discounts and freebies; Testimonials from customers and partners celebrating your work; Broadcasting latest work or archives of work; Non promotional content.

6. Non-Promotional Content

We all know someone on our Newsfeed that is only and always promoting their work. Unless they are a popular artist or someone with an army of yes-men, you may have noticed that most self promotions on social media have abysmally-low post engagements. Usually no one engages with this content and therefore these start dropping out of people’s newsfeeds. Don’t be this person and definitely do not let your business become this person. Constant self-promotion is a huge turn-off. So mix it up. Include some comedy, some fond memories, some objects of aspiration, some relevant good news from around the world. For example a vegan restaurant can celebrate a ban on whale hunting. Or a gym can celebrate a new world record in weight lifting that has been set on the other side of the planet. Push out non-promotional content that suits your audience profile. A safe thumb rule is that between 50% and 75% of all content should be non-promotional and just be purely for the entertainment of the audience.

7. Engage the Ops Team



The best social media marketing content will only be made possible if you have the support of the operations team. A restaurant kitchen needs to create a food festival for the relevant content team to be made possible. Sometimes the Ops team is just so caught up with day-to-day functions that they tend to lose sight of this sort of macro thinking. So as their social media person, go into that kitchen a drop some ideas that are within their range. If they have fried rice, noodles, dimsums and nasi goring on the menu, it may not be enough to run a Chinese Food Festival, but it is definitely enough to run an Oriental Food Festival.

(The article is authored by Jacob Cherian, the Chief Ideas Officer at www.SocialMediaForRestaurants.IN and www.WindowsToNGOs.com and writes on social media trends and tips).

Image credits: insights.som.yale.edu, agami, allninemuses.