Know Your (Target) Audience

To be an influencer, you must have an audience. Ideally, your audience is engaged and trusts your content. In Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media, Brittany Hennessy outlines the steps to grow a social media audience from zero to 100,000 followers in six stages (since zero is included as a stage). Below is a summary of each stage.

•   Stage 0 is about a commitment to building a following. At this initial stage, you have up to 2,500 followers. You tell everyone to follow you on social media. You decide what content you want to share with the world. My college courses and internship training are helping me think about how I can blend technology, sales and marketing into my content. Creating and posting interesting blogs and vlogs with links to your social platforms and follow buttons are necessary launch tasks. Joining like-minded communities on social media is also important. Instagram should be avoided since no true following can be built.

• Stage 1 is about protecting your hopes and dreams by sharpening your personal brand. Your content is created, scheduled, and posted. You need to figure out how and when to strategically #hashtag to pick up followers. Passion and a unique perspective will make you get noticed and lead to 5,000 followers.

• Stage 2 focuses on growing your follower count to 10,000 and becoming a mirco-influencer. Now is the time to follow others, like their posts, and continue to perfect content. You should follow those who you think have a high probability of following you to drive exponential follower growth.

• Stage 3, the space between 10,000 and 24,999 followers, is the micro-influencer level. Your work is paying off as you continue to sharpen your posts and grow the target audience of followers.

• Stage 4 is the outcome of your business and brand metamorphosizing. Your influential work is now ingrained in your behavior at the 25,000-follower level. As you think about how to double your audience, you collaborate with other influencers to get exposed to each other’s audience.

• Stage 5 hits the big leagues at the 50,000-followership level. Now is the opportunity to approach brands and casting agents to engage in their campaigns. You will gain exposure to their followers when they repost to you. By DM-ing and teaming up with bloggers you admire, you will quickly rise to a mega level of 100,000 followers.

💡 Optimistic Insight

My parents told me countless times to know your audience before speaking. As I read about these stages, I realized just how important this knowledge is to an influencer and in marketing. To become a mega influencer, you must know the follower audience you want to have, how to attract them, who they are, and how to retain them. You need to add and retain more followers than you lose over time. To do this effectively, you must know the influencer audience’s mindset and connection, i.e. education, inspiration, entertainment, etc. The relationship the influencer has with its audience is largely built on trust as most followers have never met the influencer in person.  

I see these same principles in action in my internship and coursework. The importance of identifying and ultimately knowing the target audience is reinforced in my internship. I have participated in meetings where my supervisors have identified the level of audience aggregation, including mass markets, market segments, niche markets, and individual and group audiences, for marketing communication. This is essential as marketers approach each differently. In class we are learning about Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results (DAGMAR). Well-defined target audiences are important for setting good objectives in the advertising planning process. Knowing descriptive variables such as geography, demographics, and psychographics as well as behavioral variables such as usage rate or benefits sought is very important for a target audience.

My parents are right – always know your audience!