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How to Identify Where Your Audience is Participating Online

In my first post at Content Marketing Institute, I spent a couple minutes introducing you to two tools that are designed to help you better understand your web-browsing audience. Today, I’ll help you identify where they are hanging out online.

“I don’t think our customers are on Facebook…”

As a marketer, you’ve probably heard (or wondered) the same thing. So, how do you respond when your CEO says, “I’m not on Facebook, and I don’t think our customers are on Facebook.”? I’ve found a tool that will either prove your CEO right or bolster your argument for participation on a wide variety of social media channels.

If you have an email distribution list, Flowtown is a wonderful tool designed to help you uncover where your audience participates. This kind of insight from Flowtown isn’t free, but it is compelling and valuable data.

Before you sign-up and spend money on Flowtown, here’s a quick two minute video to show you the kind of data you can glean from just an e-mail address.

5 ways to use Flowtown data

With the data downloaded from Flowtown you can build a better understanding of what social channels your audience participates on. But that’s not all. If you’re running a customer service organization, you can thank your customers individually on Twitter or comment on their Flickr photo stream.

Here are a few more ways you can incorporate Flowtown data into your social media and content marketing strategy:

1. Use the aggregate data to build a diversified social media and content distribution portfolio.

2. Build a psychographic profile of your entire customer base given a clear understanding of where and how they participate (or revise your existing buyer personae to include the Flowtown statistics).

3. Uncover new social media channels where participating will engage your audience in a new and inventive way.

4. Query the same list of email addresses each quarter, and track the migration and evolution of your audience to new or emerging channels.

5. Maximize and justify the time and energy you spend on specific social channels promoting your content and products by providing your management team with real stats.

Let me know what you think of Flowtown and how you might use it in your organization.