Who do you think you’re talking to? No, I’m not giving you a dressing down, I’m simply asking you if you know who you’re talking to when you’re on social media. If the answer is ‘yes, of course’, then you can feel all smug and warm. If not, let’s have a little chat about why knowing who you’re talking to is important if you want to attract your ideal fan/followers or customer.
Who do you think you’re talking to? Knowing your customer avatar
Have you heard of the phrase ‘customer avatar’? No, it’s not all about the enormous blue people that strut about wearing next to nothing, it’s a marketing term for who your customer is. OK… I always think of the blue people too. But let’s talk about it in useful terms. Some people give their customer avatar a name. They know how old they are, the shops they like, the way they dress, their income, their job, their family, the type of car they drive, their dislikes, their likes, their passions… even where they like to holiday. Sounds creepy, doesn’t it?
Actually, you might think it sounds impossible too. The good thing is you can have more than one for your business.
Your customer avatar helps you identify your ideal customers and clients. The ones you want to attract in everything you do. This can help with every aspect of your business. If your customer avatar spends every free moment on Instagram, that’s where you want to be, for example. You’ll also know what hashtags and, therefore, content they’re likely to engage with if you know what makes them tick. If they’re predominantly female, it might influence the colour choices for your branding and decor, and visa versa. You’ll find that even if you have multiple avatars, there’s a thread that connects them… and this is very, very important. Working through this and being really clear on your ideal customer/s can help you create better content, better ads, better posts, better website copy and more, because you know who you’re talking to. This can be down to the language that works for them – you’d speak to a five year old differently to an 85 year old, wouldn’t you?
How do you know who you want to talk to?
When you put out your content, have your customer avatars in mind. One of my customer avatars is an equestrian and country lady who has a small business in this sector. She’s serious about business and wants it to do well, but also really appreciates her lifestyle, horses, dogs and everything that surrounds her. Have a quick scroll through my Instagram and you’ll see that a lot of the content I put out should appeal to her. I’m not going to be putting up pictures of mad parties (ok, I don’t really go to those!), family occasions and that sort of thing, because it doesn’t really matter to her. But if I was a mummy blogger, my avatar would be fellow mums who have lots of different attributes, and family occasions would fit in with that absolutely perfectly.
It’s about your audience. Not you.
You should always, ALWAYS be authentic on your social media, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but just like you discuss certain things with some people and not others, do the same on social media. It’s not that you’re hiding anything, you’re just cherry picking the most relevant stuff that will relate to, delight and engage your audience, that they want to see and you want to put out there. Because when you work out who you’re talking to, you also want to make sure you’re supplying them with content that’s worthy of their time, that supports them and helps them grow in the way they want. You won’t always get it right – no one does – but you’ll be a whole lot closer if you have your goal client/audience in mind when you write it!
