Good Morning!

Wishing you a beautiful day.  Today´s topic is “Social Media Segmentation Objectives”. I would like to clarify first, that each “social media” platform has the capacity to offer information from the visitors or audience. If we sign up for a social media platform, let´s say Google, LinkedIn, or Youtube or Facebook or others, each of those companies are able to provide to us with at least a basic dashboard with data from our audience… In addition, there are other companies that are offering those services for us... and it is up to us to decide if we want to know and analyze our audience. Some companies are extremely sophisticated with their social media analytics, meanwhile, others provide basics only. For the latter reasons, I have decided to write about this topic sharing general ideas only. If you wish to do a “social media audit”, I invite you to find a good company that can help you with that. If you wish to start a social media strategy, many consulting companies (including mine) can help you to design your social media goals and align them with your company’s purpose. We can help you to decide to transform your business into digital but for the implementation phase, there are specialized social media companies that can be hired for the implementation phase… I don´t see “social media” separated from the traditional corporate strategy. Given that almost 40% of the global population is using at least one social media platform, I realized “social media” is here to stay, it affects everything we do, including our “consulting” mandates with future companies.

As I mentioned previously in several of my posts, I am strictly tied to “corporate strategy”.  I also come from a “Bain” background consulting approach, which gives me a different overview of what the social media industry is doing. All I am trying to do is to remind us of the basics, to give us a refreshing of core conceptual insights, and valuable conceptual information for us to comprehend before we start our “social media” journey. If we start a “social media strategy” we must include it in our overall corporate and business strategy.  Social Media is not separated.  In addition, my aim for today is to help us not lose track of our goals and our objectives with social media segmentation. It is very easy to get lost in such a big pool of “digital companies” or different “social media” offers.

I would like to thank the company Wordstream.  When doing my presentation for you today, I wanted to give you an example of the different variables we can get through social media platforms. Wordstream created a graphic that considers many demographic, interest, behavior, connection, and remarketing targeting options that are at your disposal as a Facebook advertiser. Of course, this is just an example of the different variables used for the segmentation of clients.  I am sure that Traditional Marketers have reinvented themselves to offer these services to us, such as BBDO Social Media Agency of the year 2016.  BBDO reinvented itself as a “video” agency and shifted its focus from broadcast and cable to the world’s biggest social media platform — Facebook.

The Wordstream Epic Infographic can be found here: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/06/27/facebook-ad-targeting-options-infographic

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If you wish to download the set of slides using PDF Format, click here: Eliescalante Leg 4 Social Media Segmentation c 17Jan2018

Remember we are sailing through complex transition waters. Our digital journey is more than social media platforms. Social Media Marketing is the subject of at least 2 courses at prestigious business schools that are taking this topic seriously. All that I have prepared for us today are simply insights and some conceptual ideas that can´t be dismissed when considering social media segmentation. Moreover, please remember there is a difference between segmenting audiences and targetting audiences.

This is all for today. The Volvo Ocean Race teams are closer to Hong Kong. At the moment Dongfeng and Scallywag are in “stealth mode”. Let´s see who will win… They are expecting to arrive on Friday. I hope to finish by then too.

 I love you a latte! 

Source References:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/06/27/facebook-ad-targeting-options-infographic

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/demystifying-social-media

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-consumer-decision-journey

https://raventools.com/blog/5-ways-segment-social-media-audiences-without-advertising/