Defining your target audience is one of the first steps in any marketing process. Ultimately, you want to characterize your target in a way that causes your audience to understand you are talking directly to them. It is not always easy, but still a relatively basic concept. Then why do many marketing professionals ignore this in the realm of social media?
There are a multitude of tools available that allow you to link your Facebook status updates to your Twitter feed and vice versa. In the interest of time, why wouldn’t you?
For the sake of your audience, that’s why – Facebook is not Twitter.
An audience on Facebook is vastly different of that on Twitter. A Twitter follower expects to see hashtags, retweets and shared links several times throughout the course of a day while a Facebook friend expects more personal, conversational updates less frequently. Linking the two mediums may not always be appropriate.
Social media is a way to communicate to an audience, just like traditional media, and should be treated as such. The target audience is more than just the group you are trying to reach; they have interests. What you are telling them should be of significance to them.
Twitter user, @brew7vwp explains it like this, “On Twitter you talk to strangers you like, on Facebook you talk to friends you barely remember.”
Image from Social Blade
