What if I told you your social audiences — those on Facebook vs. Twitter, for example — were not only not the same, but were starkly different? Would it make you uncomfortable with your content strategy? If you are producing the same or similar content for each network, it should offer cause for concern.
Surely I can’t prove that, right? Well, I probably can. And I did for one client recently.
Take a look at the gender and age profile of Client A for people who talk about them on Twitter:
So we’re looking at a slightly male-skewed audience, generally young adult, but with 50% of its audience being 35 and up.
Now look at the same brand’s conversation audience on Facebook:
This audience is decidedly female and middle-aged, with 62% of its audience at 35 and up.
These are two different social audiences — not even close really — but those of the same exact brand on two different social networks. At a minimum, understanding this better informs your messaging, targeting and content. You wouldn’t talk to a 66% female audience the same way you would talk to a 51% male one, would you? You wouldn’t talk to a millennial audience the same way you’d talk to a Gen-X one, right?
Yet this particular brand does.
Now, certainly there exists more context than I am at liberty to share that might explain these numbers. The brand in question has quite a successful presence on both channels. But isn’t knowing the difference in your social audiences fascinating?
There are lots of benefits to understanding your social audiences from a conversation research perspective. The differences in their makeup from network to network is only one. The more I dive into researching conversations online, the more gaps I see in how brands are leveraging this information. And I’m guessing that your brand is one that probably has some gaps too.
I would love nothing more than to talk to you about how social intelligence — insights gleaned from analyzing social media conversations — can help you. If the above isn’t convincing enough, drop me a line and let’s chat!
Contact Jason Falls
NOTE: Thanks to Netbase for the data. They are my preferred social listening tool and a client. Check them out at NetBase.com.