The target audience for my job is quite broad. Working for the federal government, our true goal is to inform all Canadian citizens. I realize that each department may have more specified audiences. By using tools described in this week’s lesson, I got to discover our audience.
I have several tools for which I can make searches in my specific field – international development. I explored Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to see my type of audience. As I had anticipated, the demographics ranged. I discovered, by using the analytics that the demographics were very different in all three platforms. On Twitter, our demographic was more skewed towards men and more so in the 30 to 45 age range. Instagram was balanced with a more young followers. Facebook ranged widely in age and gender. The analytics also indicated the different times our followers were the most active. On Facebook, followers are more active around lunch whereas Instagram is later in the day. The psychgraphic information indicated our following was much more liberal. Recently we have seen a rise in popularity related to posts and tweets on gender equality. With these findings, I could deduce that my active followers are open-minded.
I managed to use the various platforms to explore groups (on Facebook) and create lists of followers of relevant hashtags using Hootsuite. I discovered that a majority of our followers are international partners and organizations.
With all these findings, I know that I will need to target specific audiences on specific platforms. I also know the importance of timing and when to issue tweets or Facebook posts. I also know our partners are closely monitoring our channels for up-to-date information.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 