Using Social Media Analytics to Refine Audience Understanding for Freelancers
As a freelancer, building and maintaining a strong online presence is crucial to growing your business. You’ve likely put in the effort to create customer personas, and you may even be posting regularly across social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. But are you refining your audience understanding as your social media following grows?
This is where social media analytics come into play. They can give you key insights into who is interacting with your content, what they’re engaging with most, and when they’re active online. For freelancers, this data is invaluable because it allows you to tailor your messaging, build deeper connections with your audience, and ultimately grow your client base.
Why Social Media Analytics Matter for Freelancers
In the fast-paced world of freelancing, time is money. You can’t afford to post content that misses the mark or doesn’t connect with your audience. By regularly checking your social media analytics, you can refine your content strategy and ensure you’re maximizing your efforts. These insights help you answer key questions like:
- Who is your audience? By analyzing demographic data such as age, gender, and location, you can make sure your content is aligned with the right people.
- What content resonates most? Engagement metrics—such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks—help you determine what type of content your audience prefers.
- When should you post? Analyzing engagement patterns can help you determine the best time to post for maximum visibility.
When you understand these elements, you can craft content that is more likely to resonate with your audience, leading to increased engagement, stronger relationships, and more opportunities for client work.
Creating Customer Personas Is Just the Beginning
If you’ve already created customer personas based on initial research and assumptions, congratulations! You’ve laid the foundation. But as your social media presence grows, you’ll want to fine-tune these personas to reflect your evolving audience.
For example, you may have started your freelance business targeting millennial professionals, only to discover through social media analytics that a significant portion of your audience is Gen Z. Perhaps your initial assumption was that your audience cared most about affordability, but analytics reveal that they’re more engaged with posts about quality and craftsmanship.
This data can help you adjust your customer personas to better reflect your actual audience. The more accurate your personas are, the more effective your marketing will be.
Using Data to Refine Your Content Strategy
Let’s dive into an example. Suppose you’re a freelance graphic designer and you’ve been regularly posting your work on Instagram. You notice that your behind-the-scenes posts showing your design process receive significantly more engagement than finished product showcases. That’s a clue that your audience values authenticity and transparency. By sharing more process-oriented content, you can build deeper connections and trust with your audience, which could lead to more inquiries about your services.
Or maybe you find that your engagement spikes during weekday evenings. This tells you when your audience is most active, allowing you to schedule posts for optimal visibility. By making data-driven adjustments like these, you can ensure your content reaches the right people at the right time.
Real-World Example: Lush Cosmetics
Even large companies like Lush Cosmetics use social media analytics to their advantage, and freelancers can learn a lot from their approach. Lush built a loyal audience by creating personas that reflect their customers’ values—eco-conscious, sustainability-minded individuals who care about ethical sourcing and cruelty-free products. By understanding their audience on a deep level, Lush crafts content that resonates with their followers’ values.
For instance, Lush noticed through their social media analytics that posts about their environmental impact received significantly higher engagement. As a result, they doubled down on that type of content, which has only strengthened their relationship with their audience.
Lush isn’t just selling soap—they’re selling a lifestyle that aligns with their audience’s values. As a freelancer, you can take a similar approach by using analytics to identify what resonates with your audience and then delivering content that speaks directly to their needs and desires.
Actionable Steps for Freelancers
Here’s how you can start using social media analytics to refine your audience understanding and boost your freelance business:
- Check Your Platform Analytics: Most social media platforms offer built-in analytics tools. Make it a habit to review these metrics weekly or monthly. Look for patterns in age, gender, location, and engagement.
- Identify Top-Performing Content: What posts get the most likes, shares, or comments? Take note of the topics, tone, and formats that generate the highest engagement.
- Adjust Your Posting Schedule: If your analytics show that your audience is most active at a certain time, adjust your posting schedule accordingly to increase visibility.
- Update Your Customer Personas: Based on the data you collect, update your customer personas to reflect your audience’s actual demographics and interests.
- Experiment with New Content: Use the insights from your analytics to try new content ideas. Whether it’s sharing more behind-the-scenes posts or diving deeper into topics your audience cares about, let your data guide your experimentation.
Bonus Tip: Don’t forget to track your progress! Regularly check your analytics to see if your changes are yielding positive results.
This article is based on my upcoming book Engage and Thrive: A Guide to Building a Strong Online Community of Raving Fans, available on Amazon on November 1st, 2024. Stay tuned for more actionable insights to help you build a successful freelance business! CLICK HERE to go to my Amazon Author Page!
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Veronica Goldspiel, a #1 best-selling author and veteran freelancer with over two decades of experience, has worked with top motivational and self-improvement speakers worldwide, including luminaries like Tony Robbins and T. Harv Eker.
Veronica’s expertise spans various sectors, from healthcare to entertainment, and offers a holistic approach to business and personal growth. Her extensive skills in social media management, content creation, and book publishing as well as health and wellness continue to empower clients globally.
As an author, Veronica penned works such as her #1 Best Sellers Freelance Success Secrets: 21 Essential Habits That Will Transform Your Freelance Business From Surviving to Thriving, Dream Catchers: Mastering the Art of Realizing Your Dreams and From Likes to Profits: A Guide to Choosing the Most Profitable Social Media Platforms for Your Brand. She is also the author of Finance for Freelancers: Maximize Income, Manage Cash Flow, Minimize Stress, Reflections for Dream Catchers: The Inspirational Book of Wisdom for Your Journey to Success, and Making Your Business a Social Media Superstar: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating, Maintaining, and Promoting Your Online Presence. You can connect with Veronica at: www.goldspielcreativeenterprises.com
