With so many different kinds of content being produced and published on myriad channels and platforms on a daily basis, it can be tough to cut through the noise and be seen and heard by your intended market. That’s where social media audience targeting comes to the rescue.

Read on to learn how to best engage your audience by selecting the ideal platforms, media types and finally the content itself with our four tips for social media audience targeting.

1. Find the right social network

There are six major social networking sites available for you to attempt to reach your audiences. In no particular order they are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. While Facebook may be the most popular with the most users worldwide (more than 1.4 billion as of the end of Q1 2015), it is not necessarily where you want to play. Depending on your line of business, products and service offerings some of the other networks could be more lucrative for obtaining the ever-elusive engagement digital marketers covet.

For example, Twitter is great for reaching more media-oriented industries, like journalists, bloggers, and those involved with television and cinema, while Pinterest is great for food/cooking, fashion, crafting and home goods. Instagram is perfect for events, tourism, sports and outdoor activities due to its visual nature, whereas LinkedIn is great for all things B2B including software, office products, hardware and of course professional services.

2. Focus your efforts

With so many different social networks available to go after it can be tempting to try and take them all on at once. We strongly recommend you don’t! Each channel has its own nuances and best practices for audience engagement and it requires a huge amount of bandwidth to tackle them all.

Instead, try selecting one or two that best represent the people you are trying to reach. Focus on creating content specific to each channel, measure its effectiveness and then iterate on it to ensure maximum interest. It’s better to have one high-performing social platform than a half dozen mediocre outlets.

3. Create relevant, personalized content

The next step to targeting your market (and potential buyers) is to generate great content that resonates with them. To do this, you need a deep understanding of their desires, pain points, motivations and point in the purchasing funnel, but researching and discovering these is for another blog to discuss. What’s important for the task of social media audience targeting is that you are developing personalized, relevant content for your consumers. Being specific is the key here – it needs to speak to a particular customer segment at an exact point in their purchasing journey. While there are dozens of possibilities to choose from, you also happily will have dozens of chances to share this content on your social platform(s) of choice.

Want to target buyers early in the research phase, say someone thinking about daycare for their dogs? Tell them all about the benefits of socialization and the ills of loneliness for pets. Looking to close a deal on the latest enterprise cloud software package? Try posting a video testimonial from a satisfied client with contact information for your sales team embedded.

Creating a connection to your potential customer is paramount – the more specific and personalized your piece of content is, the better chance it has to reach its intended target.

4. Zero in advertising with demographic data

Once you’ve found the channels you will focus on, and have become a master of content creation for that specific network, it’s time to talk about advertising and paid engagement. All of the above mentioned channels, with the exception of Instagram as it is only in the beginnings of providing paid promotion, provide the ability to target your audience by gender, age and location.

Facebook, with its elaborate user profiles, has numerous ways to target the specific audience you want to tap, including by likes and interests, relationship status, workplace and education. Twitter allows you target by keywords within user profiles, by device and platform used to access the network, and even allows you access to followers of your followers. LinkedIn provides advanced targeting through job titles, functions and seniority, as well as company size, personal skills, schools attended and group memberships.

With these four tips, you’re sure to make the most of your social media audience targeting. Pick the right network, create the right content, and then get it to the right person to maximize your effectiveness and engagement.