4 Tips for Finding Your Target Audience on Instagram
We know there is a lot of information out there, by the time you wake up tomorrow, there will be even more to try and work your way through. If we can give you once piece of advice, be specific, being vague is going to complicate things for you.
1. Create a Buyer Persona for Your Brand
Before you start researching your audience, you should create a buyer persona for your brand.
A buyer persona is a made-up profile of who you would think your customer would be and who you would like to engage with your brand.
To create your buyer persona, you need to take a closer look at the products and/or services you offer and think of the people they are best suited for.
For example, let’s say you’re selling bags (for men and women) with minimalist design and a high price tag. In that case, your buyer persona is a person who likes good quality bags, whose taste leans toward minimalism, and who has the financial resources to afford a luxury timepiece. That is the type of person you would want to have as your loyal customer. Knowing exactly what type of customers you want to attract with your social media marketing efforts is a great place to start.
Still a little confused? Don’t worry, we’ve created some examples for you. (See next page)
If you’re battling to fill in all the areas, that’s fine, you don’t need to, this template is here to provide you with insight and direction.
2. Find Out Who Your Followers Are
Now that you have your buyer persona, you should determine how it compares to your actual Instagram followers. To do this, you should go to your Instagram Insights panel and click the Audience tab. There you can see the age, gender, and location of your followers – three important Instagram metrics that can help you target your future marketing campaigns.
Ideally, this information should match some aspects of your buyer persona.
3. Research Your Followers’ Interests
Once you have a better idea of who your followers are, you also need to research their interests. To do this, you will need to visit their profiles. Pick a few of your followers who have liked or commented on one of your posts and see what type of content they share on their profiles. Read a few of their captions to get a better sense of the language they use to communicate their ideas. This is important because they may find your content more relatable if you write captions in a style that’s similar to their own.
While you’re on their profile, click to see what other pages they are following. Although this may take some time, it will give you a better idea of what your followers are looking for on Instagram. During your research, you may notice that many of your followers are interested in, say, cats. They may follow accounts that post cat photos or some cat-related hashtags. Either way, you can use this information to your advantage and perhaps incorporate cats (or any other interest) in one of your future posts.
4. Use Hashtags to Your Advantage
In researching your target audience, you shouldn’t forget about hashtags. Instagram now allows you to follow hashtags the same way you follow other users. Rather than just passively researching hashtags and adding those that you think will perform well, you should take a more active approach. Look at the hashtags that your followers are following and try to identify a few that you can use in your posts.
Hashtags also allow you to actively reach out to users who fit your buyer persona but who may not have heard about you. To do this, you should identify a handful of hashtags that are relevant to the content that you normally post and see what others are posting under each of those hashtags. If you see a post that looks great and is also relevant to the content that you typically post, don’t hesitate to like it. While at it, take some time to click through to the author’s profile and quickly look at their other posts.
If you see more content that you like and is also relevant to your niche, in addition to hitting the like button, you might also consider following the profile in question. After all, it is clear that the author has an interest in the products and/or services you offer, which already makes them a great member of your target audience. What’s more, actively showing interest in what other people have to say is a great way to build lasting, meaningful relationships on social media.
The Final Word
No matter how creative your social media campaigns are, you can’t expect them to succeed if you keep targeting the wrong people. Instead, you need to do some research and determine who the people that you need to reach out to are.
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