Using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to reach your target audience

Engaging and connecting with your target audience is what social media all about. With millions of users across all the social media channels available, the biggest challenge for many businesses is how to get hold of their target audience on the channels that they use. While it may be important to reach a broad group of consumers with your digital marketing strategy, it’s just as important to reach consumers that are actually interested in your company and what you stand for.

These people can help you spread the message about your business to their own social media circles.

Do you know and understand your target audience and what content they are after? Let’s have a look at how you can use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to find information about your target audience. Find below a couple of tips on using these social media channels to research the audience you are after.

Twitter
While having a Twitter profile is not a requirement to use many of the “free” tools available with Twitter, it will definitely help you with your digital footprint. With the built-in search tool for Twitter (Twitter Search), you can start your research on this tool without an account. You can use Twitter real-time search to look for topics and people you are interested in. If you are looking for a restaurant in Pretoria, for example, and you are using these keywords in your search, it will return the most recent tweets from people who are mentioning those keywords on Twitter.

There are also various 3rd party tools available that connect with Twitter such as Hootsuite and SocialMention that will give you results that consists of photos, videos, and mentions. To start searching for targeted users rather than “hot topics”, use tools such as Social Bakers and Twitter Counter to find the names and profiles of users you are interested in connecting with.

Twitter chats
Twitter chats are very similar to Twitter search where you can engage and participate in weekly chats on Twitter that are topic focused around various themes such as technology, fashion, sport, and even public relations. These “chats” take place at specific times every week and they range from a few minutes (30 minutes) to all day. Find an interested topic to follow and see who’s participating in the chat. This is another great way to find targeted users.

Facebook
Facebook search is completely different than a search engine, where you search using phrases and it displays all the most relevant matches. With Facebook search, when typing in a keyword such as “iPad”, it will only show relevant results with “iPad” in the name.

If you want to broaden your search on Facebook, use the Facebook page directory to search for relevant pages. You can also use the directory page to search for various topics such as people, brands, companies, local businesses, and then filter them by country. By using the Facebook page directory tool, you can search for relevant pages and topics you are interested to follow and that are relevant to your business.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is so much more than just a digital resume — but for most people using this social media channel, LinkedIn is just an online CV. In truth, we are past that stage; and LinkedIn offers great features that can help you connect with relevant people. The easiest way to connect with people on LinkedIn is through Groups. If you search for “social media” on LinkedIn Groups, it will display all the biggest and most relevant groups associated with those keywords.

The most active groups on LinkedIn feature frequent discussions by members. If you want to go even deeper to find the right people to connect with, use LinkedIn answers and search for questions and answers that are relevant to your industry.