How to Engage Your Audience Throughout the Content Creation Process

In our fourth episode, we feature the social media team behind Luxottica’s iconic eyewear brand, Persol. Read on to learn how Jarvis Macchi, Roberta Merlino and Roberto Di Raffaele keep the heritage brand culturally relevant by taking cues from their audience every step of the way.

Watch the episode and read on for tips to help you get started on engaging with learning from your audience, and then letting those lessons shape how you create content.

1. Understand the differences within your audience.

You may find that different groups of people engage with your content in different ways. And this engagement could vary based on things like age, preferred social channel or personal interests. Early on, Persol’s Community Manager, Roberta Merlino, realized that the brand’s Facebook audience was different from their Instagram audience.

“How we use Facebook and Instagram has a lot to do with our distinct communities on each platform,” Merlino said. “Demographically speaking, our Facebook audience is a slightly older audience, and they’ve been big fans of the product for a long time. We receive very specific and detailed questions, and prefer private messages. With Instagram, our audience is a bit younger, and they love to interact with the brand in the comments or in Stories.”

Getting an understanding for the core differences within your followers can help you communicate more authentically as a business and also help you define your target audience. Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn how to spot the differences within your own audience.

2. Optimize your best organic content with paid advertising.

Jarvis Maachi is the Head of Social Media at Luxottica. On a typical day, Maachi and his team are creating engaging organic content for Persol’s audience, while also amplifying the strongest content via paid advertising.

“My best tip for businesses would be that organic cannot live without paid and paid cannot live without a great organic strategy and content,” Maachi said. “We have a perfect balance between organic and paid media. With organic, we want to engage the community and go in deep in the conversation with them. Then, we use paid media to amplify our strongest content, show the product upfront, and ultimately reach new audiences based on their interests.”

Look through your account’s feed to see what your audience has been engaging with most. When a post or story is liked, commented on or saved frequently, there’s a good chance it will perform well as an ad. You can then use the Promote feature on Instagram to get content that your audience loves to a new, larger group of people.

Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn more about when to advertise on Facebook and Instagram.

3. Engage with your audience daily, and incorporate learnings into your content.

While there’s no secret recipe to making great content, engaging with your audience can create trust, and is a great way to ensure your content is resonant. Merlino recommends engaging your audience with posts, Stories and messages on Facebook and Instagram — and taking each response into account.

“The most important thing you can do is interact with your audience and listen to them,” Merlino said. “Listen to what they're asking you in private or in public and let those insights inform your strategy. That's learning from your audience, and you can do it every day.”

Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn more about building a relationship with your customers or driving customer engagement on Instagram.

If this story inspired you, take your social skills to the next level with our social media management course, created in partnership with online course provider Coursera. You’ll receive a shareable certificate upon completion. If you missed any of the previous Social Skills episodes, get caught up on Facebook Watch.