4 Research Tips to Plan and Create Personalized Social Media Content
- by Alyson Shane
In a recent workshop with The Kinship Studio, we covered the importance of personalized content and how it can increase leads and sales by making your social media content more engaging.
Today we’re going to expand on some of the tips we shared with the class - let's dive right in:
What is Personalized Marketing?
Personalized marketing is the process of using data and analysis to deliver personalized content that is tailored to specific members of your target audience.
In fact, you’ve probably encountered this form of marketing before: have you ever received a “cart abandon” email encouraging you to complete a purchase? That’s personalized content.
Another form of personalized marketing is dynamic website content.
This type of personalized content will change to reflect the person’s browsing or purchasing behavior, or will change languages and stock items (for example) based on where the person is located.
What Are the Benefits of Personalized Marketing?
Some of the potential benefits of using personalization in your social media marketing include:
- Generate more customers and leads
- Create a sense of trust and familiarity with your customers
- Increased customer engagement
- Encourage content sharing
- Improve social media relevance (and lower ad costs)
- Increase brand awareness
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of personalizing your content, it’s time to dig into where we find all that customer data from in the first place:
Source 1: Review Your Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are an essential part of your marketing strategy because they help you identify specific, unique characteristics of different customer types.
They can help you understand things like:
- Age, gender, and geographic location
- Where they spend their time online
- Which devices they use (mobile, tablet, etc)
- The topics that interest them
- The influencers they follow and engage with
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of having buyer personas in an earlier post. If you’ve never created one, check out our handy guide (with free template!) to start building yours.
Source 2: Twitter Analytics
Twitter Analytics is a treasure trove of information about the people that follow you!
Check out your followers and note the following areas:
- Their interests (broad topics like comedy, weather, and technology)
- The devices they use to sign in and their wireless carrier
- Their household income status and net worth
- Their marital status
By exploring the various tabs (Overview, Demographics, Lifestyle Behaviour, Consumer Behavior, and Mobile Footprint) you can develop a deeper understanding of how your Twitter users behave.
But you’re not done yet. Next up...
Source 3: Facebook Audience Insights
Another great place to get a better understanding of your audience is Facebook Audience Insights.
Find it by opening Ads Manager, then clicking All Tools > Audience Insights.
Facebook will ask you to choose between studying everyone on Facebook, or just people connected to your page. Unless you have a giant following, select ‘Everyone on Facebook.’
Use the information you learned when looking through your Twitter Insights to inform your research. For example, you can look up people with this kind of criteria:
- 30-55 years old
- Located in the U.S.
- All genders
- Interested in Business
- In CEO or President positions
Once you’ve set up your search, Facebook will show you in-depth information about your audience. Here, you can find things like:
- Which Facebook pages this audience likes
- Where they live
- Which devices they use
- Their job titles
- The industry they work in
- And lots more!
Source 4: Look at Your Email List
The key to building an email list that helps you understand your audience is to offer lots of ways for people to subscribe. Some ways to do this include:
- CTA buttons or embedded text encouraging readers to subscribe
- Images that pop-up or slide-in on your landing pages
- Posts about your email newsletter on your social media channels
- Varied gated content (PDFs and resources that can be accessed in exchange for an email)
Different options help you understand people’s motivations for subscribing in more detail.
Once someone has subscribed, you can track the links in the email you sent them, see if they opened your email, and more.
Use a Social Listening Tool
A social listening tool is a must-have for the type of ongoing audience research needed to excel at personalized content.
Social listening tools typically offer multiple filtering options and in-depth analytics, and allow you to stay on top of any brand mentions online.
Some of the best tools out there (depending on your budget) are:
Brand24: 14-day free trial, Pro $49/month, Premium $99/month, Max $399/month
Buzzsumo: Pro $79/mo, Plus $139/mo, Large $239/mo, Enterprise $499/mo
Sprout Social: Standard $99/user/mo, Professional $149/user/mo, Advanced $249/user/mo
Brandwatch: Custom pricing
Hootsuite Insights: Custom pricing
Start Researching Your Personalized Content Today
There’s no better time to start understanding your audience and speaking more directly to how your company solves their problems.
Delivering personalized content to your customers will help you see a higher return on investment (ROI) in your marketing efforts, and creates a more connective experience for your audience.
Do you have research tips to share? Tweet 'em at us! You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter for news, resources, and the digital marketing news you need by clicking here.
