Guides to Social Media Audiences and Marketing
This guides section provides educational resources on social media audiences, targeting strategies, and data-driven marketing concepts. The content is designed for marketers, founders, and teams looking to better understand how audience segmentation works across platforms, how data is used responsibly, and how targeting decisions are made in modern digital advertising. Learn more About the SMA Guides Library.
Featured Guides
- Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences (Simple Explanation)
- Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences: Examples, Costs, and Use Cases
Audience targeting is a foundational component of social media marketing. Understanding the difference between custom audiences and lookalike audiences helps advertisers choose the right strategy for retargeting, prospecting, and campaign scaling.
-
Why Audience Membership Changes Even When User Behavior Doesn’t
Why Audience Membership Changes Even When User Behavior Doesn’t One of the most confusing aspects of modern audience systems is this:sometimes audi... -
What Is Audience Segmentation in Digital Marketing?
Introduction Audience segmentation is often treated as a tactical exercise — dividing people into neat categories based on age, location, or intere... -
Explicit vs Implicit Signals: How Platforms Infer Audience Interests
Explicit vs Implicit Signals: How Platforms Infer Audience Interests Social media platforms don’t rely solely on what users explicitly tell them. ... -
First-Party Data vs Custom Audiences: What Marketers Need to Know
First-Party Data vs Custom Audiences: What Marketers Need to Know Introduction First-party data and custom audiences are often discussed together... -
Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences: Examples, Costs, and Use Cases
Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences: Examples, Costs, and Use Cases Introduction Custom audiences and lookalike audiences are foundational to... -
Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences (Simple Explanation)
Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences (Simple Explanation) Introduction Custom audiences and lookalike audiences are two of the most commonly u... -
How Social Media Platforms Build Audiences: Signals, Data, and Matching Explained
How Social Media Platforms Build Audiences Social media platforms don’t “store audiences” the way most people imagine. There isn’t a giant list la... -
How Social Media Platforms Build and Match Audiences
Introduction Modern social media platforms are often described as advertising tools, but that framing misses a more important reality: they are aud... -
Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences: What’s the Difference?
Social media platforms offer multiple ways to reach users, but two of the most commonly discussed audience types are custom audiences and lookalike...