Surfing Twitter last week, an active Twitter user pitched an excellent question @AIMCLEAR. She asked should social media messaging be targeted to a singular objective? Or, can social messaging target multiple audiences and objectives? The question was thought-provoking and pushed our content marketing geek buttons.
This article offers our slant on multi-audience, multipurpose social content posts. We also share some Facebook and Twitter targeting hacks you may enjoy. Â First, here’s the Twitter thread that got things started and inspired this post:
Chanda, the answer is easy. OMG, yes, Of COURSE any social post can do it’s magic to multiple audiences. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to avoid multiple benefits, when done properly. There can be multiple KPIs earned from the same audience. Sometimes there are even KPIs attained that we did not intend and could not predict! Let’s use a recent AIMCLEAR Blog post as an example.
We’ll start by discussing the blog post’s main intent (Primary KPI) and then examine social post audience targeting and secondary KPIs.
The first and most obvious reason for this blog post to exist, the intent, the Primary KPI if you will, is to recruit television journalists to work at AIMCLEAR. We want television reporters, anchors and other professionals to apply for the job.
- Potential candidates will learn about our multimedia initiatives, which led to the hire.
- They’ll discover that AIMCLEAR has been a Top 100 Place To Work In Minnesota and other leadership and credibility factoids, I.E that I judged the European Search Awards in Iceland and AIMCLEAR is a Google partner.
- The header says, “ENG.” That’s old school for, “Electronic news gathering.” A mature reader will know that AIMCLEAR has been in the news gathering business for a long time.
Audience One
Here’s the targeting we used to amplify our FB wall post to users for our primary KPI, recruitment. There are a couple of ways to approach recruitment. Since Duluth is a smaller DMA (139) we did not have workplace targeting available in FB. So, the targeting is all about skills that professional broadcaster might utilize.
We posted a link to our blog post on the FB wall and promoted the post to FB audiences. Â The blog post, social posts and targeting worked! We reached our primary KPI to recruit television journalists, scoring half a dozen applications and three interviews. Â In fact, the applications are still rolling in.
Same Audience, Layered KPIs
There can also be secondary KPIs aimed at the same audience. TV reporters are…well, reporters.  Reporters do interviews, write stories, link and undertake other activities that could benefit AIMCLEAR.
Perhaps, even if a news anchor is not interested in joining our team, some could become fascinated with our story and report about AIMCLEAR. The whole social journalism thing is so stimulating that the story is news in itself. It is also local news that AIMCLEAR is 2X Inc.500/5000 and 2X Top 100 Places To Work in Minnesota. Â Therefore the post has a PR dimension. The secondary KPI is about getting writers to write about AIMCLEAR and television stations to cover us.
We reached the secondary KPI to the television reporter/anchor audience, as well. The post’s buzz and amplification contributed to our doing at least one television news interview with a reporter we targeted for recruitment. Â As that reporter walked up the stairs to our office, the first comment before interviewing me was, “Man, I’d LOVE to work here.” Interview + recruitment = two KPIs met from one user.
There is a third KPI, which applies to most everything we publish. Don’t underestimate the possibility and power of our gaining new readers. Today’s readers are tomorrow’s employees, customers and evangelists. Today’s readers may work in journalism today. Tomorrow, they could start a company or work in-house for a business that could consume AIMCLEAR‘s services.
Audience Two
Now that we’ve covered multiple KPIs with the same audience, let’s look at targeting different audiences for the same post and various secondary KPIs.
We tweeted the post on AIMCLEAR‘s Twitter page. We targeted amplification to users who look like those who follow major online marketing industry trade publications and local media, including mainstream media (newspapers, etc.). Â Our data shows that Twitter follower lookalike targeting actually targets that user and their followers, not just lookalikes. Again, there are multiple KPIs to be gained from this audience.
The primary KPI to this audience is PR. We want links, buzz, articles, interviews and relationships with writers. Â Targeting users who follow a certain trade publication usually targets the writers who author articles for that magazine or blog because the writers follow the publication they contribute to. Here’s the Tweet and the Twitter Ads amplification targeting:
We also used Facebook page post ads to target users who work at the Duluth News Tribune, MediaPost, and other media outlets.
There was one more audience build out for the PR KPI. We targeted blogger and media roles, within 50 miles of our city to help with regional media coverage for our promotional efforts. (Copy and paste these targets into FB Ads and use them yourself)
- Interests: Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger (service), video blogging, 2Correspondent, legislative correspondent, newspaper correspondent, Anchor, news anchor, morning show host, radio disk jockey, talk show host, news editor, News director, News producer, news writer, news photographer, television news producer, Executive producer, associate producer, Senior producer, assistant producer, web producer, freelance producer, video producer, content producer, interactive producer, multimedia producer, Online producer, Radio producer, segment producer, technical producer, Television producer, technology writers, technology writer, photography blogger, blogger widgets, wordpress themes, free premium wordpress themes, themes wordpress, bloggers, problogger, Online News Association, International Center for Journalists or Columbia Journalism Review
Our organic and paid PR audience campaigns contributed to AIMCLEAR earning multiple citations, articles, links and interviews. A writer we respect a lot, who covers online marketing for MediaPost, saw the fact that we’re hiring reporters as news. Her coverage honored us with a mention and earned valuable link in a publication our clients and colleagues read.
The story also received prominent coverage in the Duluth News Tribune, our regional mainstream daily newspaper. There was a tease at the top of the Monday paper’s homepage. The article itself dominated the front of the business section. The online version had 4 really cool pictures of the television studio/soundstage we’re building. For the next week, people around Duluth congratulated us on our efforts. The DNT article resulted in another, unforeseen, KPI gained, community relations.  We love that more citizens learned of AIMCLEAR and our story about hiring local people, helping downtown rebuild, etc.
There was a third KPi. The pictures online were of our staff. It usually makes someone feel awesome to be in the newspaper. Those covered sent links and newspapers to their spouses, former professors from college days and other family members. KPI three turned out to be a classic PR objective, internal relations. The result enhanced AIMCLEAR‘s relationship with our own team.
There was even a fourth KPI, vendor relations. Our office building is owned by an amazing businessperson, Jim Jarocki, who was mentioned in the DNT article. He woke up Monday morning and saw his building in the paper. He also saw interviews on the news. This exposure was great for his company because the coverage will enhance his ability to rent other properties. Jim was so excited that he came in with a copy of the newspaper and asked for an autograph so he could get it framed. Priceless!
Finally, the buzz resulted in an appearance on Webology, our friend Jim Hedger’s WebmasterRadio show. Certainly Webology has more than 25,000 totally plugged in online marketer-listeners. Jim and his cohost interviewed us for 20 minutes, within a week of the DNT post. AIMCLEAR was seen in a positive light by listeners who could hire us or…apply for a job! Nice.
Audience Three
The third audience targeted for page post amplification was AIMCLEAR‘s classic trade audiences. We wanted to make sure our treasured conference attendee friends saw the social post and blog, as well as FB users following vertical interests like SEO and content marketing.
Using FB page post feed and mobile ads amplified to this audience resulted in pure psychograpic traffic to the page and blog post. Users spent about two minutes reading the article. The KPI was list building. We set four different retargeting and remarketing pixels and cookies. We’ll use the audiences in the future to promote content and sell our services. Another KPI was subscribership. We earned both RSS and email subscribers to AIMCLEAR Blog.
Intersecting Audiences & KPIs
What’s really interesting is how the KPIs all play into each other. While the primary KPI for this audience was PR, we got additional job applications as a result of the DNT article. Two applicants told us they found out about the job from the newspaper and/or MediaPost.
Thanks for inspiring this post, Chanda! Your question was stimulating. Our take on multi-audience, multipurpose social content posts is that social media messaging can absolutely be targeted to multiple audiences to earn more than one KPI.
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