Growing your brand in the digital world is like clutching at straws.

Growing your brand on social media can be a challenge for most businesses. While it is easy to set up a Facebook page or an Instagram account, it can be challenging to build a successful community through new page likes or followers. This often leaves brands with underwhelming levels of engagement across their social media posts.

Brands will go to many lengths to build their online community; however, it doesn’t mean anything if they don’t understand their consumers behaviours or trends, after all it all comes down to knowing your audience and perseverance.

Receiving zero engagement on social media posts can be one of the most frustrating things about digital marketing, especially if you are putting a lot of time and money into it. While it can be difficult to increase social media engagement and your community, it is certainly not impossible, all you need to do is understand how your target audience works.

Outlining the key behaviours of your target audience gives your brand the upper hand when it comes to tailoring your content to their needs, wants and lifestyle. Finding trends on how and when your audiences consume and engage with social media can give you a clear insight into how your digital marketing strategy should be implemented to help your brand grow online.

Since we know that Facebook users use the platform differently, brands must take into account the diverse audience in order to deploy a well-rounded campaign, that uses content and engagement tactics to reach all possible segments. Facebook users can be broken up into four key segments; Attention Seekers, Devotees, Entertainment Chasers and Connection Seekers; which can help marketers in their efforts to increase engagement by understanding that most people are looking for in their social media consumption.

Brands should apply these segments in their marketing campaigns in order to create a successful brand community that is actively engaged in the content that is being posted. For example, using a Devotee as a brand ambassador to assist with publishing and creating content can draw more people to the brands community and help gain a larger following.

In order for brands to step away from the endless attempts at increasing engagement through random posts, they should tailor their content to their audience to grow personal interactions and meaningful engagements.

What social media platform do you think best allows brands to interact with their audiences?