According to Tommy Walker<\/a>, \u201creturn traffic is the most important thing. If you never get that return traffic, you are never going to get to the consideration point.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This post will be all about how to capture the attention, interest, and loyalty of your readers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll explore how you create a connection with your readers that makes them want to come back, just to read *you* and whatever you produce (whether you\u2019re a solo creator, brand, publication, working with influencers<\/a>, whatever).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the goal is building an audience, we should first consider what constitutes an \u201caudience,\u201d and how that differs from other content marketing metrics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much like conversion metrics, how you define an audience member depends on your specific context. Also like conversion metrics, there\u2019s almost certainly an escalating scale of discrete actions that lead up to the most engaged audience members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An audience is a group of people who consume or interact with your content regularly. It is composed of individual audience members, who exist on independent continua in your sphere of influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means that an individual audience member can become a \u201cfollower\u201d and can also leave the audience at any time, and the \u201caudience\u201d itself is filled with a changing cast of audience members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, for the nuance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a \u201cconversion\u201d is the most proximal discrete action in a business sense (e.g. a lead generated or ecommerce purchase), and a micro-conversion is<\/a> a discrete event that precedes and correlates with the eventual macro-conversion (e.g. an ad click or email list signup), then we can map out a hierarchy of audience engagement similarly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how I look at it, in order of importance and engagement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where you define an audience member depends on your business. For creators or “thought leaders” making money solely off of content, it might be when someone pays for your content. Or it may be when someone subscribes to your email list for free. A startup or small business<\/a> might have a different definition, such as someone regularly engaging with their email marketing<\/a> campaigns or new content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In almost all cases, I think it would be too early to consider someone who sees your content on social media platforms (awareness) or reads your content periodically as a follower. Not only are you dependent on algorithms for your reach, but it’s simply a lower commitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most common definition of an audience member is someone who subscribes to an email list, though I can see two potential arguments against that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One is that not every email subscriber is engaged. Anum Hussain<\/a> put together a brilliant presentation about her approach at Sidekick (now HubSpot Sales), which treated content like a product. They mapped out engagement metrics like \u201cmonthly active subscribers\u201d to define which email subscribers were actually reading their content. Harder, but if you\u2019re serious about it, probably better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another is that some people subscribe to you or follow you, not as a fan, but as a hater. While \u201chate following\u201d<\/a> is unhealthy on the part of the follower, it\u2019s not uncommon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, like any metric, you\u2019re going to have to make the tradeoff between precision and utility<\/a>. The more granularly you define your audience metrics, the less useful they\u2019ll be because of the amount of time and effort you spend collecting and cleaning up the data. But you also don\u2019t want loosely defined metrics, such as just aggregating all the above stages I listed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Defining this metric is the job of the content strategist<\/a>, probably in conjunction with a good analyst. In my opinion, your best approximation of your audience is usually with three buckets of metrics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To increase the number of leads and turn them into highly engaged subscribers you can leverage tailored quizzes using a WordPress quiz plugin<\/a> or use an AI quiz generator<\/a> to drive returns on engagement and nurture leads effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll leave out customers or purchasers for the sake of this article, as some may be your \u201caudience\u201d and some may just want to buy what you\u2019re selling (I, for example, wouldn\u2019t consider myself a superfan of the dish soap I buy, but I am a customer). <\/p>\n\n\n\n A good qualitative way to think about this is to flip the script: ask, \u201cwhom do I follow?\u201d In a podcast discussion<\/a>, Allie Decker described what she thinks of when she considers herself a \u201cfollower\u201d or audience member:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat means I bypass Google and I look at what they\u2019ve written, no matter what the topic is. I appreciate the way that they think and the way that they approach whatever they\u2019re writing about. It\u2019s like how you have a favorite author – their newest book, you\u2019re going to buy it. Doesn\u2019t matter what it\u2019s about.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I kind of think that that translates more into blogging and writing online than anybody can admit, because so many things are just keyword-based — which, there\u2019s value to that. But I think building up a reading habit outside of Google alone is incredibly powerful.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nAllie Decker, co-founder and head of content at Omniscient Digital<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n An audience signifies a unilateral or bilateral relationship with a group of people. You, the creator or brand, are speaking, and the audience listens. Sometimes, the audience speaks back to you and you listen (in the case of YouTube comments, blog comments, reader emails, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A community is different<\/a>. A community is where members speak and listen to each other, share experiences, and build meaningful connections. Effective community management<\/a> is essential for fostering these interactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the difference can seem foggy, a good question to ask if you want to know if you have a community<\/a> or an audience is, \u201cif I stopped creating content for 3 weeks, would it grow or would it die?\u201d (paraphrased from Sam Parr on the My First Million podcast<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product Hunt<\/a> is a community. Your blog probably has an audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n It gets murkier with individual examples (for instance, Sam Harris mainly has an audience of podcast listeners and book readers, but he also has a subreddit<\/a> which is a community).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll keep things simple: audience = creator talks to group of people, community = group of people talk to each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Growing your traffic and revenue from content marketing is related yet distinct to building an audience. On one level, it\u2019s straightforward:<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, most bloggers don\u2019t ever build true \u201caudiences.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can have, for instance, a blog post that ranks for a search term (let\u2019s say \u201chow to run an A\/B test\u201d). Someone can read that blog post, yet not be in your audience. They can even, arguably, download an ebook offer that you have on that page (\u201c11 step checklist for running A\/B tests\u201d) and still not be considered an audience member. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So I\u2019m going to decouple our usual refrain of mapping out your customer pain points to search keywords<\/a>, determining intent, and producing and promoting content designed to bring in search traffic (or social traffic). That\u2019s all distribution focused. \u201cHow to grow an audience\u201d is a question of retention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our Kitchen Side discussion, we talked through a tentative formula for audience building:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust (quality x repetition) + uniqueness = follow<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the center of every fan is a feeling of trust towards the creator. I trust that Tim Dillon<\/a> will make me laugh, just as I trust that examine.com will have accurate and useful information about supplements. Trust is built via quality and consistency. You have to provide value through repeated interactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How many iterations is going to vary depending on the fan, the type of content, and how unique your voice is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Uniqueness is something you provide that no one else does. It could be a style of speaking or writing (think Gary V), or it could be a structure or format of creation (you\u2019d recognize a WaitButWhy<\/a> or Stratechery<\/a> article even without the logo). <\/p>\n\n\n\nHow to Measure Your Audience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is an Audience?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Escalating Scale of Audience Engagement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Audience vs Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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How to Grow an Audience with Content Marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A Formula for Content Marketing Audience Development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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