Can I choose a target audience when I create a post?

SocialPilot allows you to target various segments of your audience when composing a post. This document will detail how to select specific targeting options when creating content on:

Facebook
LinkedIn

To start audience targeting, go to the Create Post composer of SocialPilot.

First, you will learn how to set the audience targeting on Facebook.

Facebook Audience targeting

Note: Make sure that the “Audience optimization for posts” is turned on in your general Facebook settings before you start using “Audience targeting” for your Facebook pages. Learn more here.

Switch to the Facebook tab in the Create Post composer.

Note: The audience targeting feature is limited to Facebook pages only.

Find the audience targeting symbol on the bottom strip of the post composer and click on it.

You will see two options in the drop-down menu.

Choose the right targeting option for your individual posts.

Preferred audience: Choose this option to ensure the post only shows up in the News Feed of a specific segment of your fans. Also, this targeting will not restrict the visibility of the post on your actual Facebook page for other users - not included in the preferred audience.

Target the preferred audience based on the following criteria:

Interest:

Age:

Gender:

Location:

Languages:

Relationship Status:

Educational Status:

Restricted audience: This option work as a companion to the “Prefered Audience” feature. Choose this option to restrict a segment of people from seeing your posts on their news feed. Unlike the Prefered audience, this post won’t be visible to the restricted users even when they go by themselves to your Facebook page.

Restrict the specific audience based on the following criteria:

Age: Here, you can select the age below which the post would not be visible. Leave the box on “everyone” if you don’t want people below a certain age not to see the post.

Location: Select the location where you don’t want this post to be seen.

LinkedIn Audience targeting

Note: Audience targeting is limited to only LinkedIn company pages.

Switch to the LinkedIn tab in the Create Post composer.

Find the audience targeting symbol on the bottom strip of the post composer and click on it to reveal the targeting option panel.

Select the following demographic field for LinkedIn audience targeting:

Industries

Company Size

Seniority

Functions
Languages

Continents

Countries

Cities

Note: For LinkedIn targeting, it is mandatory for your company page to have at least 300 followers. You must have at least 300 followers belonging to the demographic field you are targeting for the post to publish successfully.

Also, if you are choosing multiple parameters for targeting, the combined follower count must add up to at least 300 for the post to be published successfully. Let’s take a case to understand the function more properly.

Case: If you have 150 followers belonging to the 11- 50 employees segment and 150 followers in the 52-200 employees segment, then both of those segments must be selected in order for the targeted post to publish successfully. If the follower counts do not add up to at least 300, the post will not publish.

How do I know that my page meets the follower count for each demographic field?

LinkedIn targeting is built intuitively to let you know in real-time if you are meeting the follower count requirements, whether you are posting to one Company Page or many.

Note: If your follower count is less than 300 for a targeted demographic, the Follower Counts tray will show 0 followers. This is a limitation of the API. If you have over 300 followers in the targeted demographic, the number will reflect the exact number of followers targeted.

What happens if I schedule a LinkedIn post with the required 300 followers in the targeted segments, but my page loses some followers in the meantime taking the follower count below 300 at the time of posting?

In this scenario, the scheduled post will get published without targeting since LinkedIn checks the follower count before it gets published, not when it is being scheduled in SocialPilot.

Similarly, suppose you schedule your posts while your followers are below 300, but at the time of posting, the follower count reaches 300. In that case, your post will get published with the selected targeting criteria.