🏗 How to Build Your Audience
Roadmap to create the most valuable asset
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
🔓UNLOCKING:
Previously on Digiboarding:
In the last issue, we talked about why it can be a good idea to start with building an audience & community instead of starting with a product.
To remember, here is a quick wrap-up:
Audience / Community building before building a product is an excellent way to:
Better understand problems & needs, validate ideas and co-create
Accelerate the learning curve for both the creator and the members
Keep you motivated and accountable along the ride
Distribute your product/service in a more effective and affordable way
But more importantly, it is "the way" to build trust! It is the way to create loyal, true fans regardless of how many.
Once you build a relationship rooted in trust and provide real value to your audience/community, they will be ready to buy whatever you offer.
Then, the question is how to build an audience.
This week, I will try to cover the necessary steps to follow.
Next week, it will be even more fun: We’ll talk about how to monetize your work by leveraging your audience 💸
🔎 DEEP DIVE: HOW TO BUILD YOUR AUDIENCE?
I am also new to this journey with Digiboarding, so I've studied many successful cases. Based on my takes, here is a potential roadmap:
1. DEFINE YOUR NICHE
The first thing to do is to decide:
whom you will be talking to
which problem you solve
which needs you are addressing
You can start with a broader niche and then narrow it down.
By doing that, you can reach fewer people yet with unmet solid needs.
If you open a yoga channel on Youtube, you will be one of the thousands of similar examples, but if you specifically create videos for 60+ aged people who want to start Yoga, you have a higher chance of success. Fewer people may follow your content, but they will be your true fans.
The other way around is also possible.
Ali Abdal started creating videos for MD students in Cambridge first and became a productivity guru for millions of people.
But let's admit, it is more difficult to differentiate from the competition when you keep your audience broader.
So, if you insist on keeping your audience broader, you need to approach the topics you cover from a different angle or add an entertainment aspect to your creations.
Kat Norton, aka Miss Excel, reaches everyone who wants to learn excel by making learning Excel a fun thing with her creative videos full of music, dance and energy.
If you ask me, I would go for a well-defined niche.
2. RESEARCH YOUR NICHE
There are a couple of things to research what your potential audience talks about.
What you can do is to:
Search for similar creators creating content for your potential audience
Research the comments, questions and mentions on social media under relevant hashtags or accounts.
Enter similar communities and observe conversations and frequently asked questions.
Spend time on Reddit to look at the discussions in relevant subreddit.
Find relevant Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups and Twitter Lists.
Additionally, you can look at search trends of specific questions that may be potentially asked by your target audience on Google Trends or Exploiding Topics.
Researching your niche is a living process you must continue as long as you create content.
The needs can change and evolve.
Keeping up with your audience's needs may require time and effort.
However, it may save way more than you spend by helping you to create targeted content addressing real issues.
3. CREATE AND REPURPOSE CONTENT
Once you define your audience, it is time to create something valuable for them.
Audience building can only be achieved by creating targeted, high-quality content in any form that serves your audience's needs and objectives.
It can be on any of the existing platforms in any format.
You can make videos on Youtube, start a podcast, write on Medium, open a blog, start a newsletter and create content on social media.
I think there are three starting points for a beginner content creator:
Create content about a topic that you already have expertise and network
Create content about a topic you want to learn more about and refer to experts’ opinions frequently in that area
Create content about an interest area that people want to talk about
If you fall under the 2nd and 3rd categories, don't let imposter syndrome stop you create content.
You don't have to be an expert on anything, but you can still help someone a few steps behind you.
In the end, it is all about channeling your passive consumption energy to create something actively, as David Perell also pointed out.
I also like how Gary Vaynerchuk approaches this.
He gives an example of Friends fans who watch the show every night for years:
Once you start to create content, you need to repurpose it in line with the nature of different channels.
Create Twitter threads with the core ideas from your newsletter.
Summarize your blog post in a long-form post on LinkedIn.
Turn a popular tweet into a blog post where you elaborate on the idea.
Record a podcast to interview one of the successful people you referred to in your article.
A common mistake to avoid here is trying to focus on multiple channels simultaneously from the beginning. Instead, choose 1 or 2 main channels first and expand your footprint to new channels once you nailed it.
4. DISTRIBUTE YOUR WORK
Easy start: Announce your work on your social media channels.
Social media is your display unit, especially if you want to build a personal brand.
So, updating your profile info, profile picture, and banners is critical.
Don't spend an enormous amount of time making your logo design perfect, but ensure that you communicate the benefits of your creation to your potential audience.
Reach out to your potential first members one by one
Share a few sample issues of your work with your connections who may be most interested.
Talk to your first followers individually to get feedback, learn favorite topics and formats, and what they need to hear.
In addition to popular creators, reach out to people who have a presence in your niche with a relatively smaller audience.
Trying to connect with experts with a huge audience can be tricky. Instead, you can reach out to creators with fewer followers who are probably more accessible.
Share your work with them and ask for their opinions.
Mention them in your work and social media posts, and give links to their creations.
You can offer cooperation and co-creation.
Don't ask them to share your work with their audience directly; create high-quality pieces they want to share.
Find online discussions where you can leave a link to your creation.
Spend time in forums, Facebook groups, Twitter Lists and subreddits where discussions occur around the topics you create content about.
Leave the link to your channel, newsletter or any specific piece of content wherever seems relevant.
5. COLLECT FEEDBACK
The first version of your content may not be the ideal one. The topics you cover and the way how you approach them may change.
It will also take time to find your voice and tone.
That's OK.
But, to progress in the right direction, you need to gather feedback constantly.
There are different ways to do it.
Engage with your followers 1-1, ask for feedback via e-mails or social media, review comments, and organize online & offline gatherings.
Ask for their ideas, and develop together. This process may even lead to a product that you build together.
If you prefer to make it public, provide updates consistently and document your progress.
Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt is a great example showing the importance of collecting constant feedback:
"Ryan constantly collected feedback from members to learn about their experiences and to make sure future designs aligned with what people wanted. He would send out design mocks and let members comment directly on them with his feedback. This made him confident that he was building the right thing, and it made members feel invested in the development of the platform. Remember, asking for people's feedback is a form of reward."
6. TRACK YOUR PROGRESS
It is important to define objectives and measure your progress.
Depending on the content type and channel, your objective may vary.
You can track the number of Instagram followers, Youtube subscribers or organic visits to your blog.
Creating a database by gathering e-mails from your audience is worth a million whatever metric you follow.
This gives you the power to reach out to their inboxes even if they leave you on social media.
Hence, even if you start with social media, after a while, you should consider starting a newsletter or providing freebee materials (templates, PDFs, e-books) to collect e-mails.
You can create a simple landing page using tools like Cardd, create a website with Notion or you can upload templates on Gumroad.
Collecting e-mails will also help you when you decide to monetize your work.
We will be discussing monetization ways in the next issue.
7. CREATE A COMMUNITY OUT OF YOUR AUDIENCE
In the last issue, we also highlighted that audience and community are different enough to separate.
When your audience reaches enough size (let's say when you have your first 100 true fans), you can consider moving your most interested followers to a platform.
When you create a community out of your audience, you will make them engage not only with you but also with each other.
You need to provide an online environment using a platform like Slack, or Discord or a more advanced one like Mighty Networks and Circle to trigger engagement and moderate discussions.
Managing a community is a whole different job requiring total dedication.
It needs to be discussed in a separate issue if you want me to do :)
🧐 SCEPTICAL ZONE: POSSIBLE CHALLENGES & DOWNSIDES
Is it a must to build an audience first?
To build an audience, you must create a product and provide value for sure.
They go hand-in-hand.
It is critical when you want to monetize your work.
Having credibility and trust among a particular group of people before selling anything gives you an advantage.
📦 WRAP-UP
Audience building will not happen overnight.
It requires time and effort.
You need to be very patient!
However, it is definitely worth it.
Having an audience eager to see your next creation is the most valuable asset and can not be replicated.
🗂 GAIN PERSPECTIVE: HANDPICKED PIECES
Why Consistency is the Key to Success | Sahil Bloom
(700,000 Twitter Followers in 2 Years)
Dickie Bush: How to Leverage Twitter to Build an Audience and a Business
Justin Welsh: 5 Steps to Building An Audience of 100M+ Through Writing
How to Build an Audience Even if You're Nobody by Neil Patel
What's working on LinkedIn in 2022 to build a large and engaged audience
📚 STUDY: RESOURCES TO LEARN MORE
Hypefury Blog on growing an audience on social media
Tweet100: 100 Days Challenge Publishing more on Twitter
Podcast Insights: Guides on how to start and grow a podcast
Course: Audience Building Cohort-Based Course on Maven by Blake Burge
Book: The Embedded Entrepreneur: How to Build an Audience-Driven Business
Newsletter: You Are The Media on building a loyal audience
📣 Notes from Digiboarding:
Digiboarding hit 63 subscribers this week, just after my announcement on LinkedIn. Thank you all for joining!
I would love to hear from each of you! Please share:
What do you think about the content I cover, the format, the length etc.?
Any recommendations for topics you want me to cover in the following issues?
Any other comments & suggestions?
I have started to use social media more actively and share Digiboarding-related content on my personal accounts.
See you next week to talk about how to monetize your audience💸