We need an audience. As the Kinks said in their 1972 hit, Celluloid Heroes, “Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star, and everybody’s in show biz, it doesn’t matter who you are.” To get beyond the dream, we need to master an online audience.
To be a star, we yearn for watchers, listeners, readers, fans, and followers. But in today’s massively overcrowded internet, finding and building that audience is more challenging than ever.
These methods are intended to help you, creators and creatives:
- Find your online audience – your readers, followers, audience, users, and potential prospects, customers, and clients.
- Reveal who they are, what they need, and how they’ll respond to you and what you offer.
- Most importantly, show you how to connect with them and learn in-depth and intimately how they interact with any interface, content, app, site, learning, or digital value you put out there in the world.
- Find your ‘Ubers’ and Influencers. These are the leading thinkers, bloggers, consultants, and researchers in your space. You probably already know who some of them are if you’ve spent any time in your chosen space.
Google your subject matter, explore online groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, check out the podcasts on iTunes, search YouTube – and ask anyone you find who else you should follow. The best approach for finding the thought leaders is to ask other thought leaders.
A power tip: on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms, you can view who is following whom. Use those features.
Then reach out and connect with them. Ask the Ubers about the needs of their audience. Be open and honest about the value you provide or that you are developing, and why you’re asking. Share your understanding of who the audience is, what they require, and how to engage them – and get feedback on those assumptions.
Ask the Ubers to comment or expand on those. Also, ask them how they connected with their audience and how they do it now. Ask them: How did they find their audience? How did they learn about them? And how do they now engage their audience? - Find the ‘Junior Ubers’ in your space. Ask them about their current challenges. The approach here is similar to the major Ubers above, but with a key distinction: Junior Ubers are new, they’re hungrier, they’re more novice, and they will have a different perspective. In many cases, they go deep into narrow, specialized niches and have more insight and expertise than the big names.
In many cases, they have a more current and innovative perspective – and they will be more likely to interact with you. Ask them: How did they find their audience? How did they learn about them? And how do they now engage their audience(s)? - Find your ‘Practitioners’. These are the professionals, artists, consultants, and entrepreneurs providing adjacent or parallel products, services, and value to the same audience as you.
For example, if you’re consulting on content promotion in social media, find vendors of all those social media tools, apps, and widgets. Practitioners will have different audiences and new perspectives on this because their livelihood is based on providing similar but different value to the same users and audiences that you do. - Ask all three of the professionals above – Ubers, Junior Ubers, and Practitioners – about their ‘adjacent’ users and their adjacent needs. Again: How do they find them, learn about them, and engage?
- Go read the comments and questions on the blogs, YouTube videos, social media posts, and any other online content of the Ubers, Junior Ubers, and Practitioners. Comment back and offer helpful insights and suggestions. Connect directly with those who comment intelligently and start a dialog.
- Go to Buzzsumo to see the top trending topics in your space. Go to the sources of that content – blogs, websites, and social media sites – and read the comments from real people. Comment and connect with those commenters, and start conversations.
- From Buzzsumo, find the writers of that content and Google them. Follow any trails from the Google search results: blogs, blog comments, online groups, social media, events, or any sources you can find. Learn who follows those writers, and find ways to connect and interact with those followers.
- Approach those Buzzsumo followers just like the Ubers and Practitioners above. Contact them and talk to them.
- Go to Quora and search your topics, themes, keywords, and relevant subject matter. Find and read the other questions and posts about those topics. Notice who’s asking and who’s answering. Find the most prolific writers and follow them. Go read their other content and notice who’s asking and commenting on those.
- Use Quora to simply ask the questions on your mind, including ‘where do I find ____<fill in the blank with your audience>___’. You may find posts that already provide some insight. Better yet, you’ll get some new, focused answers about your target users.
- Bonus Tip: Use ChatGPT to locate your audience. Engage the bot in a conversation with creative follow-up questions about who, where they are, what they need, and how to connect with and serve them.
In the online world today, you face two primary gatekeepers and network accelerators for your voice and your message: the algorithms and all the influencers described above. This is an inscrutable mix of humans and machines. Each area of expertise, each narrow category or subject matter reacts and responds differently.
Go engage the people and machines in your space. The better you master that mystery, the greater your reach and exposure.
All outcomes in business happen only through the experiences we create.
$995 value, now FREE: The art of compelling experiences
In-depth Masters-level Course, e-Workshop, Virtual Toolkit, and weekly Newsletter on User Experience and Human-Computer Interactions: the art and science on how to influence users to engage, respond, sign-up, and buy
Or sign up for The Experience-Experience Newsletter
I’m Bob Berry — researcher, speaker, writer, and innovator on the art of compelling experience.bob@itstheusers.com / LinkedIn / http://ItsTheUsers.com
