Today, I’m going to teach you how to build an audience very simply. But I thought it would be a really fun idea to, instead of just giving you some typical influencer strategy for 2023, go through and tell you exactly what I would do if I were building an audience this year.

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If I was starting again, here’s what I would do (what my exact strategy would be) 

Now, if you’re just meeting me for the first time, and you’re like, “what do you even know about building an audience?” I have actually prioritized building an audience online, it seems, since 2014. And from that, I’ve been able to build a business that has generated millions of dollars since I started it. So I do know a little bit about building an audience. I also have 12 years of marketing experience and started studying marketing back in 2010. 

1. STRATEGIZE AROUND MY BRAND CONCEPT

Before I even started creating content on the internet. 

Now, I know most gurus will tell you just get out there and just start posting. And whilst this is good advice to build your confidence, and to start building skills around content creation, if you think about your brand concept and your brand story, right from the very beginning, you’re going to have a far easier time standing out. 

The reality is that there are so many content creators these days, and there are new ones popping up every single day; whether you’re on Tik Tok, Instagram, or YouTube, it feels like every single person in the world wants to be a content creator. The way to actually capture attention is with your brand concept. 

Think about it like this: when you walk into Sephora, and you want to buy a cleanser, other than previous brand recognition, if you just walk into Sephora, the first thing that is going to pull you in one direction is going to be the brand concept, what it looks like. That is the first thing that is going to capture your attention. 

So when you’re thinking about building an audience, what is the story that you want to tell? And how are you going to visually represent that? You need to think about consumer behavior. 

Think about people, the people whose attention you are trying to capture: 

What is their behavior when they’re consuming content? scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Most people are consuming content in a very passive way.  What is going to break that passive scrolling? What is going to capture someone’s attention? It is going to be how your content looks, and how it feels in that first 0.0003 seconds. 

And so, if you really want to capture the attention of your ideal customer when you are creating content, you want it to look and feel a certain way. So the thing you want to start thinking about prior to even creating content is coming up with a brand concept. 

When it comes to brand concept, the things that you want to think about are: 

The experience that you want to give your audience from an aesthetic perspective. So how does your brand look? What are the digital assets and elements that you can infuse into your content to create a feeling for your ideal customer? All of this is to evoke a certain emotion within someone. And it’s to capture your attention based on what is important to your audience. If your audience is someone who is really attracted to, let’s say, nature, and being in nature and travel and being within the elements, then if your content is representative of that, then they’re going to pay attention. So how can you represent the feeling that you’re trying to give people with the aesthetic of your content? 

2. RETENTION

Now, the second thing that you want to think about when it comes to your strategy is retention. First, we want to capture their attention. The second thing that we want to do is keep their attention. 

So, what is going to keep them there? What is your primary brand value? What is that value exchange? What do you want people to experience when they’re interacting with your content? Why are people going to watch it? Why are people going to follow it? Why are people going to come back to your content? 

The problem with a lot of social media these days is that a lot of people have very disengaged audiences. You know, you find someone on Tik Tok or Instagram reels, and because it is just about the aesthetic, you may follow them, but you’re not necessarily searching for them. When you come back to your phone, there isn’t really that relationship there.

And that requires you to strategize around a value exchange. Now, there are a few things that you can consider when you’re thinking about your value exchange:

• Do you want them to walk away from your content feeling inspired? Well, make your content inspirational. 

• Do you want them to walk away from your content feeling empowered? Make your content educational. 

• Do you want them to walk away from your content, feeling satisfied, feeling entertained? Make your content entertaining. 

How do you want people to walk away from your content feeling? Because if you can give them an emotionally resonating experience, they are going to remember that. 

3. MASTER ONE OR TWO PLATFORMS

So we’ve started to think about how we want to capture attention, and that is going to be with our brand, then we’ve started to think about how are we going to keep attention that is with that value exchange. Let’s get into a little bit of the nitty gritty strategy. If I was starting again, building my audience in 2023, I would defy all of the gurus who told me that I needed to be across every single platform on the internet. And I would make sure that I was mastering just one or two platforms. Don’t feel the pressure to spread yourself thin across all the platforms; choose one or two platforms and really master them. 

I think one of the biggest things that most people do is just copy what everybody else is doing. They just jump on trends. That is not how you’re going to build a brand that people constantly want to interact with. 

When you understand the intricate details of how a platform works and the consumer psychology of people consuming on that platform, you can adapt that to make sure that you’re using these features to truly highlight your personal magic, your personal skills, rather than just copying what everybody else is doing. 

4. BECOME OBSESSED WITH AUDIENCE BEHAVIOUR

Particularly the audience that you desire to attract. Now, if you’re thinking about building an audience, if you’re thinking about building a community, what you want to do is dive deep into consumer behavior. You really want to understand who your audience is, how they consume, and what makes them do what they do. 

The first place that you can start when researching your audience is to research yourself. You know, thinking abou
t your own consumer behavior will literally help you to create a blueprint for the type of content that is going to help you build your dream community. If you’re building an audience for a personal brand or a personal brand-based business, it’s likely that your audience is going to be very similar to you. So what you want to think about is understanding and analyzing your own consumer behavior. 

• What makes you follow someone? 

• What makes you search for someone and go back and consume their content?

• What makes you subscribe to someone? 

• What makes you share things? 

• What makes you save things? 

Literally, get a notebook and become obsessed with your own consumer behavior. Because that is going to leave clues for how your audience interacts with individual platforms and with social media at large. And when you start to understand why people do what they do, why they consume in the way that they do, you can start building a strategy around that. 

Understanding real people and understanding why they do what they do will help you to create better content, and to create a better social media strategy overall. 

Start to become obsessed with why you do what you do. And then, you can pull that psychology into your strategy to create highly addictive content for your community. 

5. GIVE MYSELF SPACE TO MAKE MISTAKES

I would just focus on getting better every single day. I would really prioritize learning, I would drop all of the expectations, and I would try to drop all of the comparison. I wouldn’t be looking around at what everybody else is doing and feeling bad about myself if my audience wasn’t growing as fast as the person next to me. I would just focus on having fun with it. 

The most magnetic creators are not the ones that look like they overthink every tiny little detail, but rather the ones that just look like they just want to be there. They just want to be talking. They just want to be creating. So yes, while we can simultaneously be really strategic around our strategy, the most important part of it is that you are having fun and you are adding value to the people that you care about.

FREE MASTERCLASS

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✨ How to Finally, get seen by your ideal customer (learn content to get’s noticed)

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