The total global social media population is now at 5.24 billion. Trying to speak to all of them? That’s a tall order.
Instead, focus on your social media target audience. This approach makes it easier to connect, stand out, and build relationships that actually move the needle.
Here’s how to get started.
Key takeaways
- A social media target audience is the group of people your brand aims to reach on social media, based on factors like demographics, interests, or stage in the customer journey.
- Knowing your audience helps focus your messaging and efforts on the right platforms for better engagement.
- Social media analytics (including competitor analysis) can help you understand who your audience is, what they want, and how they engage with similar brands.
A social media target audience is a specific group of people your brand wants to reach on social media, based on shared traits like interests, behaviors, and demographics.
These are the users most likely to engage with your content, respond to your messaging, and convert into customers.
Understanding who your target audience allows you to:
How do you define a social media target audience?
You can define your social media target audience by grouping people who share similar characteristics or behaviors.
Brands often define multiple target audiences across different platforms or campaigns, adjusting their messaging to match each audience.
To define your social media target audience effectively, consider the following factors:
- Demographics: Factors like age, gender, level of education, location, and income level are all good starting points for finding your specific audience. Keep in mind: your social media target audience may not have the same demographics as your target audience for other marketing efforts.
- Interests: Since people use social media primarily for entertainment, inspiration, and connection, understanding these interests helps you create content that feels relevant and valuable rather than promotional.
- Stage in the customer journey: You can also define target audiences based on where they are in the customer journey. This may include potential customers, existing customers, or users who’ve abandoned a shopping cart. Each group requires different messaging to move them forward.
For example, Momofuku Goods shares recipes modified for home cooks on their Instagram account. Of course, they incorporate Momofuku Goods products, but the recipes address a core interest of its audience.
Source: Momofokugoods
Understanding their target audience’s interest in cooking is a major contributing factor explaining why the Goods brand itself has over 173,000 followers.
You can identify your target audience on social media by combining what you already know about your customers with data and research.
Here are four strategies to do just that:
- Check your business’s personas and marketing goals
- Analyze your existing social media audience
- Run a competitor analysis
- Research your industry on social media
1. Check your business’s personas and marketing goals
Start with your existing buyer personas, if you have them. If you don’t, pause here. This is the perfect moment to build them. These define your ideal customers, and give you the best snapshot of who you’re trying to reach.
Of course, your social media target audience won’t always line up exactly with your ideal customer base, but there’s usually a lot of overlap.
Next, consult your overall marketing goals. What is your marketing department trying to achieve? And how does social media contribute towards those goals?
For example, if your primary goal is brand awareness, your social media target audience may be broader than it would be for a campaign focused on direct sales or conversions.
2. Analyze your existing social media audience
Social media analytics tools provide a wealth of information about who is already following and engaging with you on social media.
Paying attention to who follows you and who actively engages gives you valuable clues about which messaging and platforms actually work.
You can collect a ton of audience research from individual social channels using native analytics built into the tools (as long as you have set up business accounts).
Or, you can use a tool like Hootsuite Analytics to track and compare your audience on various platforms. You can also learn when they are most likely to be active on each platform so you can post at the right time.
Hootsuite Listening includes more in-depth audience demographic data, giving you a full picture of who’s interested in your brand on social media.
From there, look beyond the makeup of your audience. For example, what content gets their attention? Which platforms do they prefer? Let these audience insights guide you on where and how to reach them next.
3. Run a competitor analysis
Your social media target audience won’t be the exact same as that of your competitors, but there’s a lot to learn from who they’re attracting and what’s working for them.
Hootsuite Analytics provides some good basic research capability here. Using the competitive benchmarking features, you can see how many fans your competitors have, whether they’re growing, and what content formats get the most engagement.
You can also see which posts (and types of content) are performing best. Plus there’s a word cloud of the top hashtags based on engagement goals. Combing through these hashtags can help you uncover niche communities to include in your social media target audience.
Hootsuite Listening provides even more functionality. It uses social listening (powered by artificial intelligence) to reveal how people feel about your competitors, as well as your own brand.
You can see which topics spark positive reactions, which miss the mark, and which trends are gaining momentum. These valuable insights make it easier to understand what resonates with the audience you want to reach, and where there might be gaps your brand can fill.
4. Research your industry on social media
Take a broader look at your industry on social media to understand what kind of content your potential audience is looking for. Pay attention to the topics, questions, and formats that show up again and again.
Hootsuite Listening is a useful tool here as well. It shows you what people in your industry are actually talking about, along with what they like, dislike, and engage with most.
Just as important, it can reveal gaps in the conversation. Are there any underrepresented topics that you could dominate? If yes, that’s a clear opportunity to step in and own the space.
You can also use this research to spot key industry influencers and see how they approach content. Are they reaching audiences you haven’t tapped yet? Or trying formats or angles you haven’t tested?
Finally, look at how social media users are engaging with brands like yours. Are they clicking to learn, comparing options, or ready to buy? Those signals will help you narrow and refine the audience you want to target.
Once you’ve defined your social media target audience, the next step is choosing the right platforms, messaging, and tactics to connect with them.
The following strategies can help you reach your target audience:
Set up shop on the right platforms
Choosing the right social media platforms is one of the most important steps in reaching your target audience. Platform demographics are a good place to start, since different groups naturally gravitate to different channels.
Psst: Check out our social media demographics post to find which platforms — including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and more — best align with the target audience you want to reach.
That said, demographic information is just a starting point. You also need to do some testing to see which platforms work best for your specific social media audience.
Your competitor analysis can help here. If similar brands are seeing strong engagement on a platform, it’s usually worth experimenting.
Finally, remember that people use different platforms for different purposes. For example, what works on LinkedIn won’t land the same on X. Meet your audience where they already are, and show up with the kind of content they expect to see.
Find your brand voice
Once you understand who your social media target audience is, learn to speak their social media language.
Your brand voice should be relatively consistent across all marketing channels. That said, social media allows for a more casual tone that encourages interaction and relationship-building.
For example, Wendy’s is known for its playful, cheeky social media voice, especially when bantering with competitors.
Source: Wendy’s
By maintaining a consistent personality across posts and replies, the brand feels authentic and approachable, which keeps audiences engaged.
Source: Wendy’s
Staying relatable and true to your brand matters: 56% of consumers think that brands should be more relatable on social. And 68%said that inauthentic content has caused them to unfollow or hide a brand in the last 12 months.
Pro tip 💡: Not sure what to say with that well-developed brand voice? Generative AI tools like OwlyWriter AI can help you come up with relevant content ideas using the right tone to connect with your audience.
Build an engaged following
When you speak to the right people, in the right voice, on the right platform, engagement tends to follow. After all, content that reflects your audience’s interests is far more likely to earn likes, comments, saves, and shares.
That starts with understanding your target audience, but it doesn’t stop there. To attract the right followers (not just more of them), focus on a few proven strategies:
- Publish visually appealing, scroll-stopping creatives people instantly recognize as yours
- Optimize your social profiles. Help your audience understand what to expect from you and why they should follow
- Keep an eye on trends your audience is already engaging with. Use a social listening tool like Hootsuite Listening to spot relevant memes, hashtags, and trending topics
- Post when your social media target audience is active online. Hootsuite’s customized Best Time to Publish recommendations can solve this mystery!
- Understand the algorithms to increase your chances of being seen by new people
- And don’t neglect social SEO. People who are searching for content like yours are likely members of your target audience
Run targeted social ads
Once you identify your social media target audience, you’re in a great position to create highly targeted social ads. The more narrowly you define your ad audience, the higher your ROI is likely to be.
No matter how well you understand the algorithms and social SEO, not all of your organic content will be seen by the members of your target audience. Targeted social ads are an easy way to guarantee your content reaches the right eyeballs.
(We’ve got a full guide on how to target your ads on Facebook. Many of the tips apply across platforms.)
One ad targeting option is to target people who have recently interacted with your social content. For instance, shortly after ogling the recipes on the MomofukuGoods Instagram account, I was served an ad for their signature noodles in an Instagram Stories ad.
Source: Momofukugoods
This type of remarketing is a good way to keep your brand top of mind for members of your social media target audience who haven’t yet hit “follow” on your accounts.
3 tips for building a meaningful relationship with your target audience
These three tips explain how to actually build meaningful relationships with your audience on social.
1. Know what your audience likes
As we’ve already said, knowing what your audience wants to see from you is a key reason for figuring out who your social media target audience is in the first place.
In general, people want brands to be relatable and entertaining. But there are significant differences in the specifics of what different target audiences want from their brand content.
For example, Baby Boomers put higher value on inspirational content and brand engagement, while Gen Z places higher value on creativity, entertainment, the visual aesthetic, and “good vibes.”
Remember: Researching your social media target audience gets you beyond these “in general” statements so you can craft content specifically for your audience.
Hootsuite Listening provides a treasure trove of information here. You get personalized insights on your brand to reveal what conversations are already happening, and how people really feel about you.
You’ll also see what the most popular positive and negative posts are about so you can give the people more of what they want while addressing concerns that might be on the rise.
2. Engage, engage, engage
If you want your social media target audience to engage with you, you’ve got to engage with them. Building a relationship is a two-way street.
Unfortunately, this is something too many brands neglect, and audiences hate it.
In the 2025 Hootsuite Social Media Trends Report, 27% of respondents said that poor engagement with public comments or direct messages has a negative impact on how they view brands they follow. 26% said the same about slow responses to messages.
We get it: It’s hard to keep on track of comments and messages coming in across multiple platforms. A social media management tool like Hootsuite Inbox is a huge help here, since it consolidates all the private and public messages from your social media target audience in one place, making sure you never miss a thing.
3. Test new ideas and approaches
Social media moves fast, so testing should be an ongoing component of your social media marketing strategy.
So what kinds of new ideas and approaches should you test? Again, looking to your competitors can be a great source of inspiration.
Research tools like Hootsuite Listening also help you spot new trends and approaches as they emerge, so you can get in on new ideas, and refine your content strategy and marketing campaigns along the way.
Whenever you test something new, be sure to keep a close eye on your analytics, especially for social sentiment. This will let you know whether your social media strategy is hitting the right note with your target audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you identify a target audience for social media?
You identify a social media target audience by combining what you already know about your customers with real social data and research. Looking at your platform analytics, competitor activity, and broader industry conversations helps you narrow in on the people most likely to care about your content.
What is a social media target audience and why does it matter?
A social media target audience is the specific group of people you want to reach on social platforms based on shared traits, interests, and behaviors. It matters because knowing who you’re talking to helps you create more relevant content, choose the right platforms, and drive better engagement.
How do brands segment and target audiences on social media platforms?
Brands segment social media audiences by grouping people based on factors like demographics, interests, behaviors, or stage in the customer journey. By defining audience segments, they can tailor messaging and calls to action so social media content feels more personal.
What tools and methods help define a social media target audience?
Tools like Hootsuite help brands define their social media target audience by combining analytics, social listening, and competitor insights in one place. With Hootsuite Analytics and Listening, teams can see who’s engaging, what content moves the needle, and how sentiment and conversations change over time.
What are examples of successful social media targeting strategies?
Successful social media targeting strategies focus on speaking directly to a defined audience rather than trying to appeal to everyone. Brands that win often tailor content by platform, lead with audience interests, needs, and pain points (instead of promotions), and use data to continuously update who they’re targeting and how they show up.
Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.
