8 Tips To Build An Audience Online - Facebook Groups, YouTube, Instagram Best?

In this blog we're going talk about the EIGHT TIPS to build an online audience and discuss which is the best... 

So, if you want to know some more about me, if you don't know me already, you can go to www.mattwebley.com and you can learn about how I can help you build an audience, monetize an audience, etc.

Before we start I'm going to talk about and talk you through some online audience pros and cons.

• THE GOAL POST CAN CHANGE AT ANY TIME:

Usually online audiences mean that you do not control the platform that they're on.

There's something called algorithms and almost every audience platform that you can build an audience on has an algorithm that sides who sees what posts.

So if they tweak the algorithm, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. The key is to hit with a long term approach and don't worry too much about it and just accept it will change. It won't always go in your favor but sometimes it will go in your favour. You just keep going and carry on.

• YOU CAN MAKE ALMOST ANY BUSINESS WORK WITH AN AUDIENCE. START BUILDING ONE NOW!

Find your niche.

Whatever niche you're passionate about is usually best.

You want a niche that has a community around it.

That has an interested passionate community whereby they have some problems that you can help them solve later on down the line. Even if you don't sell them, solve them at first, then you can still do it later on.

• NO CONTROL OVER ORGANIC REACH:

Now one of the biggest problems and we kind of touched on it above but you have no control over organic reach.

One of the downsides of most audience platforms is even if it starts off good they all go the same way and you've got no control over your organic reach. 

• BUILDING OMNIPRESENSE:

Often time it's good to go into one platform and master it. I think at first if you spread yourself too thin to all these different platforms, you end up doing lots of things not very well, instead of one thing really, really, really well.

So building omnipresence is all about kind of feeling like you're everywhere.

You might be on YouTube, you might be on a Facebook group, you might be in their email inbox. They might read a post to yours and they might watch a video of yours. It's about feeling like you're there and you're in the market and these days it doesn't take very long for people to forget you if you don't have that omnipresence. 

 

CUSTOMER CONNECTION:

Another one is customer connection.

I'm not talking about a list, a list’s different, a list of people you can send marketing messages to. You can build a relationship with them and you could argue they're an audience in a way, but in reality nowadays with social media and modern internet and stuff really audiences are two way.

Audiences are a great way to do that.

Oftentimes they are interactive.

Not everybody will interact. Some people will just watch or read and that's fine, but that interaction is really what brings audiences alive.

So, customer connection is amazing when it comes to online audiences.

• YOU CAN MAKE MULTIPLE 6-FIGURES PER YEAR FROM A TINY AUDIENCE:

The last thing I'll say before we move on is you can make multiple six-figures per year from a tiny audience. I'm not even joking.

You don't need a million people in an audience to make multiple six-figure a year income. 

If you've got a few hundred, highly engaged kind of raving fans or highly engaged audience members, you can literally make a six-figure per year income from that tiny audience.

If you’re thinking about building an audience and you've been putting it off now is the time to start doing it.

Don't start it if you don't intend on finishing it. These things take time. Organic audience building online takes time.

If you expect to do 30 posts in a Facebook group or 30 videos on a YouTube channel and by the end of 30 days you can have a million subscribers or a million members in your group, you are living in Fairyland. It's not reality. It's not gonna happen if you don't have a multi-year timeframe and the way you're looking at this.

So, it's got to be something you’re passionate about because otherwise you'll lose interest then don't start it. There's just no point. You've got to have that long-term mindset or it will fail. 

Which platforms are the best to build audiences?

Each of these platforms have different kind of demographics that dominate the platform. So, for example Pinterest has a heavy bias of females on their platform, meaning ultimately the best audience platform will be dependent on what niche you're in and what business you're wanting to run.

FACEBOOK:

Facebook you can't really go wrong with.

Now, I prefer groups a lot to pages, but pages do have their advantages.

For example: a Facebook group will not rank in Google, so the posts that your community creating your group and the posts that you create in your group will not get any SEO love or any traction in the search engines... a Facebook page will.

However groups are very interactive and Facebook tends to, at the minute at least, favor them organic reach wise to pages because they consider groups to be quite community-based.  

Facebook pages tend to be adverts for businesses these days, with Facebook groups tend to be legitimate in these communities and that keeps people engaged and enjoying Facebook. 

INSTAGRAM:

Instagram is definitely on the rise but it tends to be more visual based people and tends to be more of a younger crowd. 

I dare say slightly, slightly more female audience from what I've seen from my experience in niches but don't get me wrong there's a ton of men on there and there's probably a ton of older men on there too.

I'm trying to talk in absolutes to give you an idea of what platform you might want to focus on doesn’t mean, you know doesn't mean your demographics not on there.

TWITTER:

A lot of celebrities and politicians etc... use Twitter, and again the younger generations. The older generations that are non-celebrity focused tend to steer towards Facebook as opposed to Twitter.

I would say Twitter is on the decline but they may turn it around so again I'm just giving you kind of rough ideas so you can make your own mind up.

YOUTUBE:

YouTube is very much again probably more distributed outside of the older generations at least for the community part of it. Don't get me wrong a lot of people watch YouTube. The videos rank well in Google as well.

Even if your audience are not naturally a YouTube member in they don't take part in the social media community, they might very well watch a lot YouTube because the videos come up in searches that they make.

Overall great platform.

They've all got their own advantages and disadvantages.

SNAPCHAT:

Snapchat seems to be on the decline for now. 

Snapchat has a heavy bias towards the younger generation so if you're in a market or you want to be in a market whereby 18 to 24s or even younger are likely to make up the majority of that market, then Snapchat might be a place that you would go into.

But, if you sell Stairlifts to the elderly or something like that, then you don't want to be on Snapchat because your target market are not on Snapchat.

8 TIPS FOR ANY PLATFORM:

1. Focus on relationships not metrics...

Look someone can have a hundred thousand people in an audience on Youtube for example but when you actually look at the views that you get on the videos, it's a lot lower. That's not a truly engaged audience.

So, you need to focus on the relationships and not on the vanity metrics.

You're better off with two or three hundred highly engaged good relationships with people in your audience than a million people that don't care. Members or subscribers or followers mean nothing. It’s how many of those people read and consume and interact and engage with everything you put out there’re. Those are your core people. Those are the people that are going to help you build a sustained, a long-term business and income online, not the people that click. 

2. Consistency

If you're doing YouTube and you’re intending to focus on it, using it to build an audience as opposed to just doing it as a little bit fun like I kind of do then you want to be consistent.

If you're going to do daily videos and you need to do daily videos. If you're gonna do three videos a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you need to do three videos a week Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Be consistent. Honestly, the algorithm rewards momentum and consistency. As soon as you stop with the momentum everything falls to pieces especially with YouTube. They're going to reward people in their algorithms with good rankings for those people that that give them what they want which is consistent fresh new content.

Another one is engage with your audience. Don't see them as you're on some kind of pedestal shouting down at a load of people or you're on a stage with a microphone and lights in your face you can't see anyone. That's not what it is in you know, in the modern day audience world. 

3. Engage with your audience

Sometimes you won't always be able to but ultimately you are looking to build the relationships and that's gonna be through engagement. Not just through putting your messages out there. If you've spoken to somebody before you're going to feel a lot more connected to them than if you just watch their videos or read their posts. 

4. 'What's in it for me'

You want to be thinking what's in it for me. As in not for me, for your audience. What's in it for them to spend their time with you.

Typically if you're providing quality content to people, you're teaching people how to do stuff for example, then putting a load of look at me content on your channel or in your group it's not going to perform too well. Their attention is the currency of the internet so you know they are blessing you with their attention and you should bless them with the respect they deserve for giving you that attention, by giving them regular high-quality stuff that as they see value in. 

5. Give high quality free value

We've already touched on this, but basically if you give stuff away, it activates the law of reciprocity. So the more value you give them, the more they want to give you back.

One way to get people to try your product is to give them a free trial. Let's say you baked a cake and nobody knew you as a really great cake baker, well you give them a little chunk of your cake for free and say try that and they love it, it activates the law of reciprocity.

It's kind of the same kind of thing every time you put free content out there it is an opportunity for that content to be like a fishing rod in a pond and bring your audience to you as it ranks within the platform's algorithm.  It will attract your audience that are interested in that content and then you activate the law of reciprocity honor and are able to build an audience and an engagement and relationship over time.

6. Off platform boost 

When you're starting out with any channel, any community, any group, any future potential audience, you need to give them an off platform boost if you can.

Now, you might not always be able to do this if you've got literally nobody to add to it then you can start the grind right from the start and just start by putting content out there that's keyword focused on the platform and build it that way. 

Let's say you want to start Facebook group you would mention it on your YouTube channel.

This typically does not include telling your friends and family about it. It's not about going and posting it on your Facebook profile saying I've got a new YouTube channel. That typically ends badly for most people.

If you've got some other web assets leverage them by injecting that initial interest in your audience and building that initial seed audience with those people which brings me and that brings me onto this which is kind of about the omnipresence.

7. Bounce them around

If you've got a YouTube channel bounce it to a Facebook group. If you've got a Facebook group, bounce it to a YouTube channel and whatever your platforms are, if it's Instagram, if it's Snapchat, if it's Twitter.

You don't want to go crazy. You want to stick on the ones that will make most sense to you. The algorithms are very different which you can benefit from. The Instagram algorithm might show this bunch of people your message, but then the Facebook algorithm even though they're owned by the same company, the Facebook algorithm might show a different bunch of people the same message. Bounce them around the social media platforms. I never really understood why people did this before but it's a good thing to do.

I have my own Facebook group - Secret Wealth Project, go join it. It's free. It's cool. Everybody's friendly. You're welcome wherever you are in the world and that's cool. I've also got an Instagram. If you go to Instagram.com/secretwealthproject. You can join my Instagram and there you go there's an example of me bouncing. 

8. Niche is key

Don't be doing a general niche. It's not even a niche if it's general.

If you're interested in playing the piano, don't go for a musical instrument niche because you think people, you know you'll get more people because they're interested in musical instruments. It doesn't work that way. If you're interested in playing the piano with one hand tied behind your back whilst riding the unicycle, then do that. Now, that might be a little bit of a micro niche but it's just an extreme example.

They are eight tips for generally generating an audience on any platform. Hopefully you enjoyed it and found them helpful. Thanks so much for reading.

Matt Webley