A question I was asked today in my Facebook group was:
For someone starting out what advice would you give to build your online audience?
Here is my short and sweet answer:
How to build an online audience
- Identify your ideal audience
- you can’t talk on the same level as someone if you don’t know who they are
- Identify what their biggest challenges are
- you need to be talking about what they want help with, not just posting pics of your dinner and walks with your dog.
- Be clear on what your page/group/list is going to be about and include and what your chosen audience will get out of it.
- A little planning goes a long way in saving a lot of time with meaningless ad-hoc posts
- Ask yourself why they would want to join.
- If you can’t find a reason, keep thinking! Get creative and find a compelling reason for others to join and stay.
- Create a mix of posts to include tips on how to solve their pain point and posts to encourage interaction and engagement. Run competitions.
- Constantly posting the same old thing gets boring. Your audience will turn off.
- Answer all comments. You want to work on building relationships and trust.
- Ignoring people who have taken the time to interact with you is plain rude. They won’t bother again.
- Give loads of support to your audience. Again, this builds trust and helps position as the expert to go to.
- By giving good quality advice and support you will start to create an environment where people will want to buy from you when they need the products or services you offer.
- Post valuable content consistently and persistently. It will take time.
- Don’t give up or let your posts become sporadic if you don’t get a good response from the beginning. People will be watching you behind the scenes.
- Interact in other groups and invite people to join your page/group/list
- (if in groups check what the rules allow – pay close attention to this!)
- Add the link to your online channel everywhere – on your website, bottom of email signature etc
- Don’t waste any opportunities for people to join your online tribe.
And if you need more help coming up with ideas and planning to build your online audience, come on over and join my member’s club. Everything you need is right there.
