Creating quality content is imperative to stand out on social media. So is crafting a social media marketing strategy—a plan for purposefully publishing content that connects with your desired audiences and achieves your desired results.

In this article, we’ll look at three questions that can help you refine your strategy by improving how you understand your audience.

1. What motivates your target audience?

Depending on your business, you may already know that you’re reaching out to millennials, the upper middle class, female tourists, or even a group that encompasses all these. But it’s not enough to roll out content based on broad categories. Within their respective demographics, consumers act in unique and different ways.

Buffer.com suggests delving beyond groupings, and seeing segments of your target audience as specific “marketing personas.” Essentially, this requires empathizing with your targets as individuals with specific backgrounds and behaviors, and asking questions about their motivations:

• What does the consumer value?

• What are their goals in seeking a product?

• What challenges keep them from buying it?

Once you understand why consumers seek information based on individual motivations, you will be better equipped to give them the content they need.

2. Which social media platforms do they use?

To deliver that content, you need to understand which platforms to use. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter consistently rank among the world’s top social media sites, but you shouldn’t post on them for that reason alone.

For example, according to Hootsuite.com:

• Roughly half of Instagram users in the United States are 18 to 34 years old.

• 72% of US teenagers now use Instagram, compared to only 51% who use Facebook.

• 41% of Americans 65 years and older now use Facebook (twice the number since 2012).

Again, a deeper look into your target audience will suggest the platform where you should plan to reach them.

Depending on your industry, you may also consider more niche alternatives. If you are targeting a customer base that actively seeks out visual ideas and inspiration, you should promote yourself through Pinterest and Tumblr, which are ideal for art sharing. If your customers like to discuss ideas related to your industry, you may want to leave links to your website on message boards like Reddit.

3. When do they browse social media?

To ensure people see your content, you need to publish it while they’re online. All your efforts to post relevant content on the right platform will be wasted if these only get buried in feeds.

Studies on user engagement, such as those shared by Hubspot and Oberlo, identify days and times when people are most active on different websites. Yet you should also use your target audience itself as a resource. Their preferences and behaviors will enable you to determine other optimal times.

For example, if you sell athletic gear and apparel, you could try posting just before, during, and after important games. Fans are likely to be on social media at these times, checking Facebook for live updates, or tweeting commentary during commercial breaks. You can catch them at the exact moment they’re online, not to mention when they have a sport primarily in mind.

What motivates your audience? Where and when can you find them on social media? Delve into the answers with your content marketing agency, and together, you can lay the foundations of a more targeted social media strategy.