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Audience building is the number one thing you need online and in real life.
Without an audience of regular and faithful fans you are at the mercy of gatekeepers.
Unless you have an audience you have to pay others to notify people.
Most businesses neglect audience building or shout to empty audiences.
Specific types of social media updates can help you attract one!
How do you build an audience?
One easy way is to go where audiences are on social media and publish certain types of updates.
So audience building is the number one thing you need to care about to succeed on the Web in the long run.
Are you also into blogger outreach and relations?
That’s another common way to reach existing and build your won audience.
I offero both for clients. When I start I often have to explain what it is.
The most important thing is the value proposition.
On the other hand you need to build an audience first to reach out.
You need a legit way to contact people.
Talking to strangers on the street?
Are you a pick up artist? Someone keen on getting one link stands?
Why not just genuinely engage with and relate to people?
Contacting complete strangers is much more difficult!
Reaching out to people you have interacted with already or who already remember and cherish you works like a charm though!
Usually I take a blog for granted.
Yet many businesses do not have one or they have a sloppy blog.
It’s in such a bad shape that it is rather ostracizing visitors.
Such a content strategy is “just create a simple blog”.
A blog with no audience is dead on arrival though.
Where do you get your audience from then?
The easier way to build an audience is social.
Audience building is social as in
- socializing
- social media
- social SEO
A content strategy is not just about content SEO. It also entails social SEO to build an audience.
The best way to reach out to bloggers is to be a blogger yourself and talk to your peers.
To get your blog going though you can’t start with outreach right away.
That’s like talking to strangers on the street and begging them for favors!
Build an audience first!
You need at least to establish some kind of audience on one single channel.
That only happens when you engage with people regularly and offer value over time.
This post originally focused on X/Twitter as an example.
Yet to a large extent these insights can be useful on other sites as well.
In essence you need to publish seven types of social updates frequently to “join the conversation”.
Yet most business accounts are merely broadcasting, self-promotional material selfishly.
Ideally an outreach campaign does not start with cold mailing but is just the logical extension of prior encounters.
The best tool to create familiarity with people you can’t meet in real life is social media.
It can be beneficial for you for many years to come as was my Twitter presence since 2008.
Yet it degenerated over the years not just ever since Elon Musk took over and generated lots of drama around it.
You may want to consider other tools as well. I mainly engage on LinkedIn nowadays. I also contribute Mastodon these days.
How do you build an audience on X/Twitter and elsewhere?
You are actually helpful! Before that you listen in the first place.
Flooding vs helping people
Don’t just flood people with links with no added context.
Automation is the worst enemy of true engagement. Most marketers set it up and forget it.
You should always take a perspective of mutual aid.
How can you help people you want to help you?
Remember that social media is like real life, it’s give and take, giving being first.
Without a sufficient online presence you can’t give and reach out properly.
Sending a mail without prior connection should be the exception.
Writing a blog post or at least a social update and addressing a person first is a good start.
You can’t talk at people out of the blue like thy typical “Hey there!” mass mailing spammers do.
You have to provide value on an ongoing basis writing different posts or updates.
Social media update examples to publish frequently
Now I present you the types of social media updates to publish frequently.
Those will allow you to create a stable online presence and build an audience.
Once you’re established and have an audience you can start to reach out.
Ideally you contact the people who engage with you first!
Contacting high profile influencers who will most likely ignore you?
Again, that’s the typical “Hey there” approach.
I get dozens of such messages per day even though I’m not even a proper influencer myself.
OK. Long story short. Here are the actual social media update examples.
1. The reshare
Reshare content of your peers and potential supporters, example:
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How to buy excellent SEO services on Get a Freelancer and Fiverr: DONT. Simple.
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2. The value addition
The self researched valuable update of a source not everybody reads anyway, example:
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7 Ways to Organize Your #Content for #Curation http://bit.ly/OZ8796
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3. The question
An update asking and/or crowdsourcing for support, example:
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Can I say I “pursue blogging” or “pursue blogs” or does this sound strange in English? In German you tend to say simple things complicated.
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4. The reply
Replying to one of your followers/followees update offering your advice/insights, example:
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@malcolmcoles The acronym SEO has been used for the first time in 1997 by Adam @Audette
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5. The group conversation
A conversational update addressing more than one person, example:
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@fantomaster @bathbusinessweb @pedrodasilvauk Thanks for the feedback guys. The context is “I pursue blogs for German clients as well.”
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6. The emotional outcry
A cry for help or message seeking like-minded individuals to back you, example:
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I love it. I work on a great content piece for 4 weeks and it’s done and then the blog editors decide to fix it and make it worthless. #fail
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7. The testing update
The update about testing or trying new things as in “I’m doing something I’d recommend to you as well” update, example:
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A big disturbance in the force! Open Site Explorer is down. https://semrush.com is your friend.
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Other ways to connect with people
Of course there are many more ways to connect with people on social media and beyond.
You don’t have to use the same old outreach templates or something.
It has to work naturally. I’ve explained in the past that social media is like a huge party!
There are millions of people who engage in small talk. Just be yourself:
- be friendly
- be entertaining
- be helpful
to attract similar people. Engagement is not about self promotion or monologue!
Keep your misguided ego at bay!
Sending out your ego-driven “me, me, me” messages all the time? Quit it!
To prepare for an outreach campaign you ideally interact with the people you want to contact one day.
Of course it’s not like you reshare them and half an hour later you send the needy mail!
“I’m the person who shared your content! Now please help me!”.
It’s more like chatting at the party and reaching out a few days later.
Even then don’t assume that people owe you something.
Self-promotional updates are not a good foundation to get people to react to your outreach efforts.
Please keep them at bay. You are not the person everybody is interested in.
In a holistic way “you are the universe”. So the more you embrace “others” the more you benefit yourself.
You are not separate from everybody else so don’t act like an egomaniac!
In SEO 2 “altruism is the best egoism” so at least help others first so that they will reciprocate.
*Creative Commons image by Dani_vr