Cultivating an Audience on Social Media

Use data to identify audience

• Being able to identify one's target audience is one of the first steps to building a social media audience and tools such as Google Analytics are quite useful in this regard. Other useful sources include Facebook Audience Insight, the Pew Research Center which conducts social media use surveys and Smart Insights.
•  Social listening tools can be used to gather insights about competitors within the space. Examples of these tools include BuzzSumo, Google Alerts and Hootsuite.
•  Demographic information including age, location, income, and job will be useful to have.

Paid Advertising

•  Paid advertising will give brands a better advantage to reach their audience strategically using platforms such as Facebook.
• This type of advertising leads to a higher conversion rate and increases the chances of reaching a wider audience. Facebook’s Adverts Manager can certainly help with this.
• To ensure that money is being spent wisely however, it's important to use the best social media channels to reach the target audience.

Choose Appropriate Channels

• To decide on the best channels to use, tools such as Sprout Social, Twitter’s audience analytics and Facebook’s Audience Insights can be used to learn about the existing target audience.
• Engaging with consumers on just a few social media networks might also be beneficial, especially for those that "bring the best return on investment (ROI) for [the] business".
• It will also ensure that the right audience which is likely to be most active on these channels will be reached.

Use Hashtags

• Using industry hashtags or brand-related hashtags is a good way to increase visibility and engage more of the target audience. For example, Coca Cola used #ShareACoke to engage more consumers.
• The use of hashtags attracts persons from the target audience based on keywords. Tools that can be used to make this a success include Twitter Chats, Keyhole.co (paid), All-Hashtag (free) and Hootsuite.
• Hashtags also makes it easier for the target audience to find the brand and engage in trending topics or events.