Stop Guessing: Practical Tips for Finding Your Audience on Social Media

In the bustling world of social media, simply having a presence isn’t enough; you need to be talking to the right people. Knowing exactly who your audience is, where they hang out and what they care about, is the secret ingredient to successful social media marketing. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to pinpoint your ideal customers across platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok, and beyond.

Start with the Basics: Define Your Ideal Customer

Before you post a single thing, you need a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach. Know your ideal customer profile. This involves going deeper than just age and location, think about their interests, profession, pain points, and online behaviours.

For B2B (like LinkedIn): Focus on job titles, industry size, and specific professional challenges (e.g., “HR Managers struggling with remote onboarding”).

For B2C (like TikTok/Instagram): Focus on lifestyle, hobbies, and emotional needs (e.g., “new parents looking for quick meal ideas”).

Understanding why they need your product or service will help you create content that truly hits the mark, but you don’t have to start from scratch with this. The information is already available out there.

Use Platform-Specific Insights for Audience Data

Every social media channel offers free audience analytics to help you understand who is currently engaging with your content. Whether it’s LinkedIn Analytics showing you the job seniority of your followers or TikTok’s demographics data, make the most of these free tools to see who is actually watching and interacting with your posts. If the audience engaging with you isn’t the audience you want, you need to adjust your strategy.

You should also take a strategic look at your competitors. See who they are targeting and, more importantly, who is interacting with their content. If a competitor has a highly engaged following on Instagram, analyse what interests those people share and which hashtags they are using. This can give you valuable clues about where your target customer spends their time online.

Get Found: Content, Keywords, and Communities

Once you know exactly who you’re looking for, you need to put out the right signals to attract them. The most effective method is to create content that aligns perfectly with your audience’s goals, needs, and problems. You must focus on adding value first: perhaps a helpful tutorial on a business skill for LinkedIn, or a quick, funny video that solves a common household annoyance on TikTok.

To ensure that valuable content is easily found, you must use relevant hashtags and keywords in your captions, bios, and content descriptions. This is crucial for discoverability across all platforms, helping you reach people who are actively searching for similar topics.

Crucially, don’t just post, participate. Step away from the main feed and engage in niche communities and groups where your ideal customers are already discussing their challenges. For example, join relevant industry groups on LinkedIn or participate in private groups on Facebook to offer genuine, helpful advice. Building relationships within these specific, targeted circles is one of the most effective ways to build trust and authority with the right people.

Refine Your Approach: Targeting and Testing

Your audience isn’t static, and neither should your content be. To ensure you’re always hitting the target, make testing a constant part of your strategy. Start by running experiments with different content formats (e.g., carousels vs. Reels; text posts vs. documents) and varying your posting times to see exactly when your audience is most responsive.

Crucially, never post without reviewing the results. You must track your performance analytics religiously and refine your targeting based on real data. Make the most of the many different analytic tools available, a lot of them come with free options, and you only need to consider paid ones if you have the budget. Data tells you exactly which piece of content brought in your ideal customer and which one missed the mark.

Alongside data tracking, the quickest way to gain clarity is to simply ask them directly! Run polls, Q&As, and surveys on platforms like Instagram Stories, LinkedIn, or Twitter to gather essential, direct feedback on what they truly care about, what their biggest challenges are, or what kind of products they’d like to see next.

By consistently applying these principles, testing, listening, and tracking, you’ll quickly move past simply collecting followers and start building a genuinely engaged community of future customers.

Ready to stop broadcasting to the wrong crowd and start focusing your social media efforts?

As a Marketing Consultant, I help small business owners define and target their perfect customers across platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok, translating engagement into real business growth.

Why not reach out for a quick chat about identifying and conquering your target niche?