Know Your Customer and your Audience
You might have a specific audience in mind that you want to reach when you follow the principles of engagement in your social media strategy. Knowing your customer and audience are will give you a real understanding of how to influence them or persuade them to promote your posts, share your content or engage and buy from you.
Customers
The first audience that you want to reach is your ideal customer. This is especially important if you want an opportunity to sell to someone. It is important to spend some time thinking through who this individual is. Think through what their title is in the company they work for, what organization they belong to, what groups do they want to associate with, or what questions or concerns they might have?
Understanding the demographic, the sociographic and the geographic information of your potential customer will go a long way in allowing you to familiarise yourself with who they are and the type of behaviour they will exhibit.
For instance, do they go to certain trade shows, are they reading certain magazines or peer journals, and do they belong to certain industry bodies? All this information allows you to reach the customers and relate to them better.
Creating an ideal customer image or persona will allow you to really think more deeply about your customer. Take a look at the below video to see how you can do this:
Influencers
Influencers are other peers or subject matter experts in your same field. These individuals are already known by the audience you are seeking to connect with. When an influencer promotes your article by sharing it, it can create a lot of goodwill and reach. Influencers may or may not be customers. In general, an influencer is someone who others want to relate to and who others value for their opinion.
Networkers
Networkers are individuals who are connected to various other people. A networker wants to meet people and have discussions with people or connect you to other people. They find value in the connections that they have or create for others. Networkers find value in meeting people face to face and they find it easy to seek people out. For them, the value in the engagement is in the interaction that they have with another person. Networkers are wonderful gateways for you to meet potential customers or to meet influencers. By making use of the principle of reciprocity networking can really assist you to grow your audience.