At True Anthem, most of our advice for achieving online success is based on knowing your audience—and for good reason. 

Understanding your audience is the foundation for publishers to build trust and engagement, shape your content, and settle on the best publishing strategy for your team. Your audience is the reason you show up, and without a deep understanding of who they are, you might miss them altogether. 

If you’re just starting out on social or your current content strategy isn’t working, your audience is the place to start. Interests and behaviors can change, even within a well-defined niche. It’s up to publishers to stay updated and adjust accordingly. Let’s walk through how to reconnect with your audience and realign your marketing efforts to meet them where they are. 

​​How to understand your audience (analytics)

Understanding your audience starts with knowing where to look first: analytics. Gone are the days of designating someone to sift through all your content on each platform to determine performance and trends. Analytics give publishers the data they need to capture their target audience–no guessing. 

Each platform has its analytics for tracking your audience, but there are main ones across the board to pay attention to:  

• Demographics. Age, language, location, gender, device, etc. These are the basic qualities of your audience that help you align your visuals, tone, and topics. 
• Top performing posts. Your posts with the most shares, comments, likes, and saves reveal the types of content your core audience enjoys. Create more of these!
• Engagement rate. How often people interact with your content reflects whether it’s hitting or not. High reach with low engagement means something is off. Pay attention to this. 
• Impressions and reach. These metrics help you test your distribution strategy by showing how often and how many people view your content. 
• Click-through rate. Publishers using social media to funnel readers to their website can use this metric to see how often people click on linked content. The more clicks, the more it shows motivation from your audience. 

Who are you creating content for?

Content is king, and it always will be, when it comes to social media success. Creating content takes time and energy away from publishers’ already busy schedules, so knowing who you’re making it for is key to maximizing your efforts. 

One of the biggest misconceptions about social media when determining your target audience is that you should only speak to one type of person—this is not the case. In fact, your target audience generally includes a few groups of people you should consider when creating your strategy: your core audience, potential audience, buyers/decision makers, and niche communities. 

• Core audience. These are your current golden readers who are always there, the followers who know who you are and trust the content you publish. 
• Potential followers. You can draw in new users through increased visibility and reach. These people will love your content; they just haven’t seen it yet. 
• Buyers/decision makers. When creating content, remember that collaborators and other brands are also watching how you show up. Your style and consistency have the potential to connect with future opportunities that could be great for your online growth. 
• Niche industry. Quality content builds authority and trust within your niche industry. Feel free to drop some content for other professionals, too. 

Platform choice when finding your audience 

Knowing who you’re creating content for also applies to where your audience is showing up. Your Instagram audience is not the same as your TikTok audience, and your Facebook followers will look different than your Bluesky crowd. That’s just how social media works. 

Each platform offers its own experience, engagement style, and expectations for online communities. You must dig into each channel’s analytics and adjust your approach to find out how your audience shows up in each space. If you repurpose your high-performing Instagram reel on TikTok and it’s not getting the traction you thought, you didn’t fail. Changing how you approach your audience in each space will help!

Remember: Your content is only valuable if your audience finds value in it. We give some more tips on why publishers should create valuable content that their audience wants if you’re struggling. 

TA can help you understand your audience

Understanding your audience isn’t about guessing what’s going to work—it’s knowing where to find the right data and how to turn it into content that resonates across platforms. It feels like a lot, especially when you’re working on strict timelines with small teams in chaotic newsrooms. We get it. Publishers are busy enough; they don’t have time to analyze multiple platforms to see what’s working. That’s where True Anthem steps in. 

Our platform was made specifically to help publishers save time. We use AI-driven automation to highlight your best content, identify patterns in engagement, and find the right times to distribute your content in each space. Your strategy stays optimized and responsive to changes in social media, helping your team stay relevant even during platform shifts.  

For more information, reach out to chat or jump into our demo to try for yourself.