Why You Should Meet Your Social Media Audience In The Middle

It’s seven in the morning. My alarm clock went off a half-hour ago, and I’m lying in bed, surrounded by my two dogs, begging me to snuggle for five more minutes, blue light illuminating my face.

I check my email:
New York Times: The Morning
Check.
The following mini crossword
Check.
Send the link to my partner in a text message;
Check.
Look at my work email:
Half-heartedly respond to my boss’ 545am email,
Check.
Log into Instagram:
Check.
Duolingo lesson:
Check.

Now it’s seven-thirty, and I still need time to make coffee and breakfast, get dressed, and wash my face before seven-fifty. You know this sounds familiar, and it’s why social media marketers need to know their audience.

Before algorithms existed in the early days of Instagram, posts showed up in order, and people would compete to be the first to like or engage. Did you ever comment “First like!!!” on a celebrity’s post or Youtube video? Now, the algorithm will typically lead you to posts you want to see. But the excitement of being the first person to engage with something, seeing it hit the top of your feed while you lay in bed, scrolling away, is intoxicating. The psychology behind social media supports that thrill.

Connecting with followers in such an authentic way helps garner more engagements, which is what we’re all after, and that’s why post schedules — are still critical. There are countless articles about when the best time to post for specific platforms are, but most of the graphs look like this:

Source: Sprout Social

Global engagement shows us that engagement is a mixed bag, and there’s no natural way to pinpoint what time is best to grab that engagement. On the other hand, if you know your audience well and understand their behaviors, you can make educated assumptions about what times will garner the most interactions.

For the last few months, I’ve been running my own branded Instagram account, traipsing about Tallahassee, snapping photos of every beer, meal, and weekend outing, trying to reach an audience of fellow Tallahassee lovers. Learning what best practices are for posting to Instagram is more challenging than I imagined.

Best practices can’t be applied the same way to every brand, regardless of social media platform. When I began posting and cultivating my brand, I was not the best at following guidelines or best practices. So I took a step back to reevaluate my goals and figure out which “best practices” I was missing. This Hootsuite article was where I started. The first point in that article outlines how important it is to know and understand your audience. Best practices vary for everyone because audiences are also varied.

I have very active Instagram followers. I used my audience Insights on Instagram to see when my audience was online to make sure I was targeting the ideal time to post. Every audience is different, so I discovered that my followers are all online the same amount throughout the week, and they are active from 9 am to 6 pm with a small spike during lunchtime and fall off for the rest of the day. When I started this Instagram, I habituated posting later because that’s when I spend most of my time on Instagram. Using the metrics available to me, I adapted my posting schedule to create a best practice that suits my audience.

The Hootsuite article discusses cultivating a style guide as a best practice for Instagram success. Maintaining consistent style is a best practice that I consider extremely important for brands, and I perceive it as a way the excellent brands set themselves apart from the rest. From developing a consistent tone to ensuring every image has the same pre-sets and color scheme before posting, style guides lend credibility to a brand, regardless of the size.

My focus as I develop a brand for my love of my city is exclusively local. Many local businesses struggle with a consistent style and throw best practices to the wind. By observing the mistakes of other members of my brand community, I can learn what audiences value and cater my content to them. This article emphasizes that planning is the key to a consistent brand style.

I just started using Preview to plan my posts and exemplify the polish for which I strive. Preview allows me to schedule my posts ahead of time and preview how they look on my feed. I’m not the best at remembering to post, and I often miss my ideal window of any time before 6 pm. Using Preview has already helped me increase my post frequency and quality as I delve into my analytics to reach my audience where they are.

I’ve stopped scrawling in my planner or leaving a reminder on my phone, wasting a half-hour of my morning scrolling hopelessly through Instagram. Instead, I’ve adapted my best practices to intentionally reach my audience better and cater to my goals of more engagement. I just hope my followers are as excited to engage with my posts as I was to write “First like!!” on a YouTube video in 2009.