Chapter Eight of "Social Media and Strategic Communication"

     In chapter eight of “Social Media and Strategic Communication”, I learned about audience segmentation and analysis. In social media, the goal is not to just reach every single person in the world, but to focus on the quality of each audience member. This can be based on needs, expectations, products and services use, relationship, and engagement. More often than not, these social media communities are more specifically focused on a particular interest, location, or characteristic. This can also be referred to as their niche. Audience segmentation refers to the process of categorizing people into certain groups based on specific criteria. This criterion can be broad in nature, like demographics and population data, or very specific and focused on certain characteristics. This usually means being experiential, visually drive and industry and interest specific. The strategy of audience segmentation is used by companies because corporations, agencies, and brands collect information in order to create a profile of an audience with which they wish to engage. With these insight tools, social media professionals can be very broad in their targeting or to the point where they can be specific to the point where they can identify the exact people they want to receive their message. Another approach social media professionals should use is the omnichannel approach. This is a seamless and effortless integration of content, messages, and experiences for which the user is linked to multiple communication channels. This is a growing trend among professionals and many brands who realize their audiences are following and engaging with them on multiple channels. All of these content assets, messages, and strategies need to be consistent but also tailored in the appropriate manner for each audience for each channel. In order for professionals to target their audience, they first need demographics, which is basic population statistics including age and gender. Professionals also need psychographics, which are the advanced statistics focusing on attitudes, opinions, and interests of audience members. I also learned about the two main types of audiences, which are primary and secondary audiences. Primary audiences are made up of individuals whom you want to target first. Secondary audiences are linked to the primary messages, but aren’t the key audiences you want to reach first. I hope to learn more things like this in the coming chapters.