Tailor to Your Audience

When identifying your social media audience, start by compiling your social media channel's data and analytics. Each social network provides different types of data. This data may provide insights on the following:

• Demographic information
• Engagement patterns
• Behavioral insights
• Growth trends

Identifying the above information will help you learn who is following you and engaging with your content.

Once you know who your audience is, you need to determine their needs. However, it is impossible to know every audience member individually. This is where the data from your analysis becomes handy. You can use your data to identify their needs. Consider the following:

• Demographic details such as age ranges, locations or languages. This information can help you understand the profiles of your audience members.
• Engagement patterns such as when your audience is most active. This information will help you identify the best time of day to share content.
• Behavioral insights such as comments, shares, likes or clicks. This information can help you identify the topics, post formats and tones your audience prefers.
• Growth trends like new followers or spikes in engagement. This information can help you identify the types of new people or content that draw new people or increase engagement.

Knowing the above information will help guide your content creation because you will have a better understanding of the people following your social media accounts and what, when, where and why they prefer certain content over others. As a result, this will help you maintain your voice and direction more consistently.

You can use the data you've compiled from your analytics to help you create personas. A persona is a detailed description of someone who represents a demographic or audience. Personas are fictional characters or representations of intended audiences based on deep research and insights from real people.

When creating content for your intended audience, you should create content specific to a persona. Consider the following, using a persona to aid in creating and testing content:

• Tone
• Content type
• Channel goals
• Message format
• Channel selection
• Commander's intent

Above all, the content you share should inform, inspire, honor or promote something or someone.

After creating and testing content, it's time to monitor and gather feedback. Monitoring messages for feedback from followers and audience members is critical to engagement.

Review and analyze your content's available data and analytics to monitor your audience and their engagement. Constantly test and iterate this to maximize your performance. By monitoring feedback on your channels, you can determine what is not working in your messaging and analyze ways to improve. This will help you better understand your audience's needs and build a stronger relationship by showing them you are listening. The best places to monitor feedback are in your mentions, direct messages, search queries and whatever data and analytics each social networking site provides.

Differentiate between people who are upset and trolls who are just trying to cause chaos. Upset individuals are part of your audience. These members have genuine feedback and legitimate concerns. Trolls, however, are online bullies who want to upset others and spread disinformation and misinformation. In cases where you need to respond to a troll, disinformation or misinformation, remember to ensure you're in accordance with DoDI 5400.17.