With how much social media influences today’s society, we focus more on the numbers and followers and stop right there. It’s one thing to have people following you, but how many people are engaging with the content, know you and your brand and doing something beyond a like (clicking on the link in your bio, buying your product, etc.)? I’m so overly addicted with my data and analytics that I know exactly what you like and don’t like. Below are some things I learned and know about my audience and I hope it encourages you guys to get to know yours as well.
1. Night posts work best.
I started to post after 8-9pm because I noticed that people were liking more stuff in the evening (probably because they’re home from school or work), most posts are coming throughout the day so it’s an overload and because it always shows up at the top of feeds when people wake up in the morning. Although we are constantly on our feeds, evenings just worked better for me.
2. Showing a preview of my blog with the slider posts.
Ever since Instagram added the multiple photo feature I started using it to show previews of my blog. It did much better showing a preview rather than just the cover. Showing a preview of it (half) and having people click the link in my bio got more views on my blog, but showing the whole thing got more engagement because reading the blog on Instagram is much easier than having to take the extra steps to read it on a blog. Haven’t decided which route I’m going to stick with, probably going to alternate it so I can get both.
3. Zoomed in inspirational videos work better than zoomed out.
When I show snippets from my inspirational videos it’s a much wider shot on YouTube. The snippets of zoomed in shots got more engagement than zoomed out, so now I keep them zoomed in.
4. Multiple snippets don’t work.
This adds on to my last point, but I noticed that people only like the first inspirational snippet more than the second so I end up archiving the second anyway. I liked showing different snippets, but realized that pretty much gives away the whole video so now I’m going to just be choosing the best snippet from each one.
5. No one clicked my social links in my MailChimp blasts.
MailChimp is a great tool for e-mail marketing. If you don’t use it, start! Anyway, their analytics are very detailed and I noticed that no one was clicking on my social media links that I put in the footer. I’m assuming it’s because the people I’m emailing follow me on those socials, so I removed that footer and it made it less cluttered. On the note of clicking, I noticed that when I have sent my church notes or included a video, the video got more clicks when they could see a visual rather than just a hyperlink.
6. Snapchat stories do not work as uploads on YouTube.
I’m constantly snapping and like some of the stories enough for an upload. Only thing is, no one on YouTube likes the story uploads so I stopped doing that. I think it’s because when you upload stories there are black frames so I’m going to try one more time without the frames and shoot them sideways and see if that works better.
7. Recipe videos work better than pictures.
I got into cooking, I even made it a thing on my blog. As much time as I spent to get the perfect food photo, people liked watching me actually cook rather than looking at the process through slider photos. I tried to use the blog approach with recipes, definitely didn’t work in this case.
These were some of the biggest things I’ve learned about my audience, how well do you know yours?
Stop focusing on the numbers and focus on your audience. The numbers will come the more you know your audience because you’ll be delivering content that they actually like.