Building an Audience: There’s Nothing Wrong with Redheads, Is There?

Lately, I’ve become aware that the audience I most easily attract online is not always the audience that I’m writing for.

Not that I don’t appreciate every blog reader or Twitter follower who considers me worthy of their time.  But I’m also aware, in a practical sense, that the feedback and discussions I most need to develop in order to grow as a writer / professional are not conversations I can have with just anyone.  In my case, I consider myself an armchair sociologist who just happens to make a living producing online media; thus, the conversations I’m most interested in deal with sociology and media, yet the people most likely to read what I write are online marketing professionals looking for business tips.  Clearly, there’s a disconnect between who I need to reach in order to grow and who currently finds value in what I offer.

What Your Audience Says About You

Online, life (and information) moves fast.  Being interesting or relevant is your key to breaking through all that white noise between you and the people you wish were paying attention to you.  Because if no one truly cares about what you have to say, you’ll be talking to yourself forever.  Not only is that sad, lonely and uncomfortable, it’s also unprofitable — both fiscally and emotionally.

So let’s examine four steps toward building an audience for your ideas.

1.  What Is Your Idea of “Success”?

Some people only want a large following.  The specifics of who’s listening to them are less important than the fact that anyone is listening at all.  Plenty of careers have been launched by shouting into the void and seeing who shouts back (and then selling them something).  For these people, the nuances of conversation are just distractions; what they want are numbers — the more people they can get listening, the merrier.

Others have a specific passion or two, and being known as an expert in their desired field — or at least being able to have mindblowing conversations about their pet topics — are far more important than having an arena full of devotees.  For them, it’s imperative to get involved in the “right” conversations, rather than getting involved in LARGE conversations.

Neither goal is right or wrong, but you need to know which goal is yours before you can understand how to build YOUR kind of audience.  You also need to know who’s already listening, so you can gauge where you are in relation to where you want to be.

2.  Who Is Your Current Audience?

Unless you’ve been scribbling manifestos in a notebook, odds are, you’ve already shared your ideas with someone, and some of them have given you a response.  So examine the state of your current following, regardless of its size, and focus on the hot spots.  Which of your current conversations get the most traction among your existing audience?  Which blog posts do they comment on?  Which links do they retweet?  What does your current audience care about?

If you already have conversational traction in a certain topic, that may be a signal that your audience trusts you as a voice in that particular wilderness.  It might also mean that topic is your path of least resistance toward a larger or more meaningful discussion.  But whether you WANT to be known as an authority on that topic or not is another issue…

3.  Who Are Your Conversational Allies?

No one wakes up with a massive following; you build your following organically, often with the help of benefactors who appreciate what you have to say (and voluntarily share your wit and wisdom with their own audience).

But no one appeals to everyone, so don’t fall into the trap of trying to “get noticed” by every tastemaker in your vicinity.  For example, in the social media field, you don’t need to be loved by Scoble, Brogan, Godin, Arrington AND Winer.  (In fact, some people spend years trying to piss them off.)  But it does help to get noticed by at least one of them, because one tweet from any of them can funnel more traffic to your ideas than you can generate all day on your own.

Being taken seriously by people who are already taken seriously by others is invaluable.  However…

4.  Are You Being Noticed by the People You WANT to Notice You?

If you went to the bar intending to pick up a blonde, but you came home with the phone numbers of a dozen redheads, you’d realize that who you INTEND to appeal to is not the same as who actually finds you interesting.  But you’re still appealing to someone, and quite naturally at that — so isn’t that a positive?

That depends on your end goal.

If your conversational allies are sending you waves of traffic, but none of it provides you with actionable value, then you have to make a choice:  do you adjust your criteria for success, or do you adjust your message?

If your idea of success is specific to developing an audience in a specific topic or niche, then you need to find a way to make your ideas appealing to those people who aren’t currently seeing (or finding value in) them.  But if you’re more interested in being “a” success than a particular “kind” of success, well… there’s nothing wrong with redheads, is there?

Tags: audience, Blogging, Business, networking, Social Media, Twitter