Over a staggering 5 billion people are on social channels these days – with LinkedIn topping the charts. Hence, the channel offers a huge opportunity for individuals to meet their purpose of social selling- which may vary from that of hiring the perfect candidate for a job to finding a great new role or simply building a better personal brand. In doing that, reaching your ideal target audience can help them accelerate the entire proliferation of social selling and the true success of it.
Understanding Target Audience – Do you really think you know it Well?
To understand your target audience on LinkedIn, you need to circle back to your purpose of being active on LinkedIn. For a senior leader, nothing could turn out better than LinkedIn to build a network and authority they deserve and grab the eyeballs – which can steer them to their most wanted next roles. The purpose is clear. Right?
Some of the secondary purposes for you could also be – to simply improve your digital network, generate business leads or to become an influencer eventually. In either of the cases – it becomes imperative that you design and define the persona for your target audience. This, before you jump to finding them through searches – and create a compelling case for them – not to ignore your content (anything that you are publishing or sharing) or your connection request.
Once your purpose is crystal clear, that is where you begin to visualize your audience. They would always be classified as Bulk Audience (or secondary audience), and Niche Audience (the primary audience).
The former are those who look upto you for value and inspiration. They are keen on following you and keep watching your LinkedIn activities. Your goal towards them would be to keep feeding them with content in the form of posts or articles or more that hooks them to think big- you may be an ideal for them. Their expectations are high and living up to them becomes your responsibility.
The primary audience, meanwhile, are people whom you want to follow but in such a way that they connect back with you – watch you and feel compelled to stay connected as your content is unparalleled and persuasive. This audience comprises your potential employers and the catalysts for your next role. Imagine – finding people from the top management in the company, where you may be targetting to reach in your next big role, amid your immediate connection list on LinkedIn. You know them through LinkedIn already – even before meeting them face to face and they have known your potential and qualities in advance through your LinkedIn profile and activities.
Connecting the Right Way – Bridging the Search Gaps
You now know that you need the right mix of both forms of audience in your network. The bulk audience will bring you volumes and visibility by engaging with your content readily and in large numbers. This can also amplify the searchability of your profile overall. Your Niche audience, meanwhile, keeps watching and subconsciously evaluating you on a variety of things such as your capabilities around solving problems, your mindset, your ability to think 360 degrees and the captivity in your profile. They see you as a problem-solver as you discuss about the key pain points in your industry and offer solutions that are evidence-based, practically viable and full of real value. They may consider hiring you the day they have a role for you.
When the solution offered by you in the form of a LinkedIn post has substance, it will automatically improve engagements and take you closer to your actual ideal audience. Knocking at the doors of your target audience cannot come in so handy. Content can serve as the bridge between your profile and your ideal target audience.
Once your persona is clear, you begin the actual search. This involves preparing a detailed list of people you want to add to your network. When it comes to closely identifying people out of your Niche audience, you need to look at their organizations, roles, and accordingly target reaching and connecting with them. Here, conversion optimization plays a huge role. In this case, conversion is the probability of the other person accepting your connection request, and optimization is all about designing your profile and posts in such a way that they simply cannot ignore your request. Take a look at how to create that pull factor in your content. For designing such a profile, you would need help from an expert.
- Ensure Effective use of Search Filters
- Identify the right keywords for industries and job titles
- Identify prospective audience through commenting on popular posts
- Use hashtags to identify your relevant audience (who may have an interest in common)
- Change filters from ‘top’ to ‘recent’ to see newest trending posts
- Keep a close watch on 2nd and 3rd degree connections that show up in your feed
Summing Up
Connecting with new and relevant people every day is critical. Often, leaders fall into the trap of investing too much in the quality of content while losing sight of who is going to consume that content. Identifying the correct target audience falls prior in the sequence for an effective LinkedIn Strategy, both for individuals, and businesses. Unless you have the right people to view your content, your entire proliferation of value content and ideas will fail to meet its purpose. If you find this challenging enough to pursue, it is a great idea to seek professional help. From optimizing your profile to identifying with the correct audience, our team can do it all end-to-end for you. Let’s connect: resume@kaizenconsultants.in
