How to grow your audience using your analytics 

Growing with your audience is tricky these days. In the days of face-to-face analogue business, we knew our customers by their first names, we had conversations with them about their lives, which often led to them being open and honest about what they thought about our product.

Of course if your business has a trade location then you are still able to have this genuine exchange. But how do we replicate this transaction in the digital world? How can we shape our digital product to suit them better?

Data

Let’s take a look at your data. This will tell you basic information about your demographic. There are lots of analytics tools out there for you to use on each and every platform. (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Website)

Today’s blog isn’t as much about finding the information out, it’s more of a ‘what the heck do I do with it’ scenario.

Demographics

Knowing the age and gender of your audience is helpful. If you discover your online audience for your macramé kit is suddenly blossoming amongst the tween market, or over 30-45’s male market, you might approach your strategy differently to be more inclusive of them, or even direct a concurrent campaign toward them. Doing a bit of research on what is in your demographic cultural environment may also be helpful in developing product lines or new product use, designing packaging or simply using language that relates to them.

Jumping on a trend can get you access to new demograhics

Visitor Behaviour

Knowing how your visitors/followers flow and engage with your page is the best way to design effective content. This includes times of day your traffic is highest as well as which pages are being visited.

Topics

If you can see that you had a spike in interest around a particular topic, do a bit of research for what else is out there on this topic. Do you have a way of positioning your product within this market, with hashtags, or becoming active in comment? Are there businesses or advocates you can line up as your influencers within these marketplaces?

Video Views

We know video is king, but how are yours doing? Are people are watching it all the way through or are they scrolling away after the first 10 seconds? If you notice that a page or person is always liking on your videos, see if you can do a bit of investigation into who they are and what else they like. You may stumble into a whole network of brand alignment  opportunities you never knew were there.

Likes

Obviously things that garnered lots of likes is good feedback. But what was it that helped this happen? Keep a note of your best performing posts, what subject they were around, what time they were posted. If you can identify trends which help you with being more strategic you can take out a lot of guess work. But note that this is not a set-and-forget deal, trends can change daily!

Comment and Shares

The ultimate goal of engagement. Whatever you are doing to illicit this…keep it up. Comment and sharing are direct invitations for you to see the person interacting with you as an advocating individual. When people step out from behind the security of anonymity to publicly show themselves on your page, or share yours to their page, be sure to greet or thank them in the same way you would if they knocked on your front door. Try to personalise this as much as possible from information you can glean from their personal or business page. (But without being creepy. Do not go with “Thanks for the share! Btw we have the same Ikea bedside tables!)

Yes, it’s all terribly time-consuming. Yes, it can be a bit boring at first. But what you’ll find is you will become more deeply connected in the community around your brand. And THAT’S putting the SOCIAL in your Social Media.

If you feel you need to immerse yourself further in the world of strategic analytics or anything social media and beyond, sign up for updates about our online courses.

Mel Anastas, Do Re Media Consultant and Creative

Melanie Anastas specialises in inciting cultural growth and change through any form of media she can lay her hands on. She lives in Perth, Western Australia.