Consumers expect personalized services from brands. In fact, a recent survey found that 80% of respondents prefer to do business that offers personalized experiences.

When it comes to social media, how do you target thousands of followers and provide a more personal approach?

That’s where your social media buyer persona comes in. It defines your followers and allows you to better market to your target customers.

Additionally, your social media accounts collect data that make it easier to gather data and identify your audience.

However, for beginner marketers, this is still not an easy task. So, we list down this simple guide to help you create or improve your brand’s social media persona.

But before that, let’s first understand what a social media buyer persona is and why you need one.

What is a social media buyer persona?

A social media persona is a semi-fictional character that represents your ideal customers on social media.

A simple social media persona for a teen beauty brand could look something like this:

Ideally, you want to create a detailed profile containing their demographics, interests, goals, and pain points. This information comes from research and the data you gather from your web and social media analytics.

Some brands even go so far as writing full fictional biographies or crafting narratives to know their audience better.

Creating a social media persona helps create content and experiences that your social media followers like.

Importance of a social media buyer persona

Consider the following benefits of creating a social media buyer persona.

Produce personalized content

When you know who you’re talking to, it’s easier for you to create content that your followers like.

And when your content speaks to the right audience, it delivers high brand engagement.

Target the right people

Use your social media buyer persona to target specific audiences for your social media ad campaigns.

The more details you include, the more you narrow down the people who want to engage with you.

Discover niche markets

Your personas also help you discover a niche within your niche. This helps you create custom campaigns targeted to that specific niche.

In turn, you provide a very personal experience to specific types of your audience.

How to build your social media buyer persona

Consider the following points when creating your persona.

1. Identify your target audience

Researching your target audience is the first and most critical step of creating a social media persona.

Who are your followers? How old are they? And what topics are they interested in?

Your social media persona should at least define your audience’s age, location, gender, income, personality, and the brands that they support.

Find out about these things to get a complete idea of who you’re talking to.

Moreover, analytics will provide more information such as your audience’s behavior and what kind of content works for them.

Most social media accounts for businesses offer analytics and metrics, so take advantage of these and always monitor your audience.

For established brands, compare your target persona with your current audience demographics. If they don’t match, you may need to rethink your target persona or change your marketing strategy.

2. Determine what motivates your audience

After looking at a detailed view of your audience demographics, it’s time to know your audiences deeper.

To create helpful campaigns for your social media persona, know and understand their pain points. Moreover, find out their goals and motives.

What makes them laugh? What are they afraid of? What are their values? What makes them take action? The list is endless.

Consider these questions and try to answer more to know your social media persona better.

If you’re finding it difficult to ask questions or answer them, look back at your set of data. What do these data say about your audience?

For example, a teen beauty brand’s social media persona uses Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. You can ask “What kind of content do they like?”

To answer that, you need to find out which platform they prefer the most.

3. Know the platform your audience prefers

Even though your audience uses several social media channels, they will naturally prefer one channel over the rest.

Use data from your web analytics and social engagements to identify which platform your audience engages the most.

With this, you can see the kind of content that appeals to your persona as well as their personality. After all, each social media channel caters to certain age groups, interests, and motives.

For example, if your social media persona is more active on LinkedIn, they are likely in the working-age group. Moreover, they are likely career-oriented, success-driven, and knowledgeable in a certain field.

These are all hypotheses based on LinkedIn’s brand personality and the people who use the channel.

Identifying your persona’s most preferred social channel will help you create effective content and focus your efforts on the right platform.

4. Find out the best time to engage with them

Even though you post good content, it will not generate engagement if you post it during the wrong time.

Figure out the best time and frequency to communicate with your social media persona.

According to CoSchedule, these are the recommended posting time and frequency for each channel:

Facebook - 1 post per day from 1pm to 4pm
Twitter - 15 tweets per day from 2am to 10pm with 1-2 hours of interval in between
Pinterest - 11 pins per day from 2am to 4am, 1pm to 4pm, and 8pm to 11pm
LinkedIn - 1 post per day from 10am to 11am
Instagram - 1-2 posts per day from 8am to 9am and at 2am

However, remember that these are just recommendations. Post to the schedule that best works for your social media persona.

If you’re working with a team for your social media branding, use a creative project management software to plot schedules, assign tasks, and align everyone with deadlines for your postings. This ensures you remain consistent and organized with publishing your content.

What does your social persona look like?

Considering all these points gives you a more detailed profile like this:

However, keep in mind that there’s no ‘right’ way for how your social media persona should look. Just remember that the more details you have, the better.

Your social media personas will help you discover helpful strategies and provide relevant content and experience for your audience.

Moreover, when your social media engagement is effective, you can direct your social audience to other marketing channels to increase your website traffic, email marketing ROI, ad sales, and more.

A Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Social Media Buyer Persona