Identify Your Audience on Instagram
As a business, you already know your target market. You know their persona
and their characteristics as an individual. However, this persona is a different
one from the one that you would target on social media. The characteristics of
your customer could have similarities to the persona of your social media
audience. However, unlike the persona of your ideal customer, your audience
would have a wider variety in character personas.
This difference between the customer and audience persona arises from the
fact that your social media audience does not have to become your customers
to like your brand. This is due to social media content providing a different
experience from what your product offers. Although the content is created to
directly or indirectly promote the brand, the audience is free to choose on
how they view your content.
Start at the macro level
This freedom in how people use content on social media leads to the diversity
of personas present in a brand’s audience. It is best to start a more general
view of your audience by identifying the basic information of these personas:
age, gender, and lifestyle.
In determining the lifestyle of your audience personas, you would only have
to consider the lifestyle of an individual in relation to your brand and
industry. For example, if your brand is in the sportswear industry, the
lifestyle of the persona would be in relation to their level of daily physical
activity.
Your customer persona (or personas) would hint as to what these are. You
can use their age, gender, and lifestyles as a starting point in creating your
audience personas
Research your industry, competitors, and target content topics on Instagram
The best way to get started in building up these personas you started is by
looking at the conversations present on Instagram. If you have an existing
presence in another platform, you can use what you know about the
conversations on that platform as a starting point. However, it is best to start
fresh since there is a greater chance that the conversation occurring in
Instagram is different from the one in the other platform.