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How To Build An Audience From Scratch
Focus on a true audience who will engage with your content.
(This article was originally written in 2018, updated for 2020.)
Articles on how to build a fanbase tend to cover tactics like Facebook Ads, collaborations & cross-promotions, and SEO (search engine optimization.)
I’ll share my thoughts on those, but let’s start with the most important thing:
A true audience gives you their consistent attention.
The best audience to build is a loyal following that has grown to count on you, and therefore, an audience that you can count on to engage with your content, share it forward, and to consider your products and services when you announce those.
If you don’t start with that understanding, then you’ll do very inefficient things such as buying Facebook Ads to get more “likes” to your fan page. This may actually move you backward, as you end up with thousands of fake fans, giving you the illusion of an audience, but no one you’re actually serving.
A fake audience doesn’t engage with your content nor buy from you. I’ve seen this happen too many times. This is why the term “vanity metric” exists.
