Types of followers in Social Media and how to target them as your audience

Social Media experts generally agree on 7 different types of followers, with some adding an 8^th. In our article Targeting and Growing an Audience, we noted that followers are not necessarily in Social Media to look for products/services to purchase. It requires skill and tact to be able to convert a follower into a sale. You cannot appeal to anyone with your content unless you understand why they are following you. Below are the different types of followers and the type of content you could possibly use to attract them.

Follower Type                                                               Possible Content 

·         The quite follower – just there reading your content	Content should show how products or services are going to be of help/benefit to them
·         Casual liker – they fancy some of your posts, and will occasionally 'like'	Have content that makes this follower feel like part of your product offering. They already fancy you, make them see how they are missing out by not buying your product or service
·         Deal seeker – always looking for promotions / uses Social Media to stay up to date on business	Offer specials; Run competitions; Make offers for purchases processed through Social Media Forums or in response to any activity in Social Media
·         The unhappy customer – is there to share a bad experience	We all make mistakes; be ready to apologize. Come up with deals aimed at making peace
·         The ranter – always yelling about something	Some of our clients suffer from challenges that have nothing to do with our products or services. Do not delete these from following you. Their comments won’t change who we are, but understanding them might provide the right attraction
·         The cheerleader – loves your brand and everything you post	That this groups raves about us does not automatically make them want to buy from us. We still need to nudge them in the direction. Content targeting this group should not only appeal for a sale but should be shareable so that they become our word-our-of-mouth advertisers as well.
·         The loyal fan – always has your back	This is the group that will comprise mostly of happy and satisfied customers. Whilst we have already done business with them we still need to target them for repeat business and they provide vital information on product improvement or development
·         The Fakers – cheap followers bought from agencies; In early 2014 – 1 out of 10 twitter accounts were fake; mid 2012 – Facebook had 83 million fake accounts. Source http://bit.ly/1MwXOK5	Some Social Media experts will advise you to buy followers and some can show you tricks on how to have thousands overnight followers. You are also going to be followed by fake accounts. Whilst these should be avoided, where we do come across them, let us not even waste time pretending to be addressing multitudes, we can never fake a sale.

 Our posts should therefore not only comprise of advertisements or promotions or special offers. We need to have a content mix that will address the needs of all these different followers. Our follower mix will determine how fast we can start converting followers into sales. We can never come up with content to share without understanding our follower make up. Classifying our followers into their different types, marks the beginning of the audience targeting process.

For assistance in classifying your followers and targeting your audience to yield a higher Return On Investment in your Social Media efforts, contact us on +27218516121 / +27799319372

Why it is important to balance your content mix in Social Media Marketing

Social Media platforms were not made popular by business activities. But the business world sought to maximise on the opportunity provided by the availability of consumers in platforms that make it easy to target audiences. This suggests therefore that in order to appeal to our targeted audiences, we ought to approach them with a content mix, that is at their 'social' level whilst attaining our business objectives. Our content has got to be witty, informative and timeous. Presentation should be brief enough to make an impact whilst the targeted audience is still paying attention. Our mix should be made up of general product information, professional advice, brand awareness and corporate values. If we are in the service industry, some of this information could actually be part of our stock in trade, but we should be prepared to share it for free. Only when we have detailed the usefulness of our products to our target audience and identified ourselves with their situation; can we then begin advertising and soliciting sales.

Many potential clients may not be aware of the full benefits they can get from our products or services. Detailed product information is one of the main differentiators between conventional marketing and content marketing. The availability of internet on our smartphones, has encouraged the average person to quench their inquisitiveness through researching. A content marketing strategy with the correct mix should leave us with a marketing edge if we present ourselves as both information and product providers. Our strategy should not be a one way communication system, but we have to listen to client responses. The information we get from clients is cardinal in product development and improvement of systems. If we analyse all this data efficiently, we should be able to outperform competitors and place ourselves at a competitive advantage.

A prosperous strategy should have a theme and program built around this mix. The frequency of the different categories on our content mix should be guided by a timetable specifying what information we are sharing on a particular day at a specified time. However this timetable should never be inscribed on stone, we should be flexible enough to adjust and be in sync with the best times as revealed by analytics. Our objective is not only information dissemination but also engagement. In this regard it becomes prudent to post during the times we are likely to receive most engagement. We could find that our content with general information is mainly responded to during working hours, whilst our content with professional advice gets most responses during evening hours. It might be necessary to switch around these times for a couple of days until we have identified the best timing. Our best timing is not when we only receive the most clicks, but when we have meaningful engagement. Without a dedicated timetable for the different categories in our mix, we may easily forget to provide relevant 'social' information that encourages engagement. An engagement, even if it is a negative response, has got more chances to be converted to a sale than a mere page view. A page view is an important lead that should not be ignored, but our efforts should aim at engagement.

How do you balance your content mix, mind sharing with your valued comments below?