Wouldn't it be nice?
Having a massive audience that listens to you, so every time you launch a product you could have a queue of traffic ready to send to it.
Well, it's possible with the right strategy, tips, and execution.
This guide will show you exactly what you need to do to get ahead of the competition.
Should You Build a Personal Brand or Focus on Your Company Brand?
Good question. The answer is, that it depends.
Generally speaking, a personal brand may be easier to build, and if you're starting from 0, it may be the right play.
But in terms of pure business results, the company brand may be more beneficial.
What you could do: Build your personal brand first, and then piggyback your company's brand off it.
For example, if you have 10,000 email subscribers and make a Giveaway where people have to follow your new company brand's Twitter, then it'll be pretty easy to grow it fast.
Or you could take the approach of only focusing on your company brand, but if you do, make sure to show the people behind the company and follow the steps in this article closely.
There really isn't a right or wrong approach for this, as both works. It's your choice.
How To Build an Audience For Your Business (Step-By-Step)
Here are the steps to building an audience for your business:
1. Understand your target audience
The first step to building an audience for your business is knowing your target audience:
- What do they like and don't like?
- What emotions do you want them to feel when thinking about your brand
- The problems they have (so you can offer solutions)
- Demographics & ages What questions do they have?
- How they speak
- Where they hang around and who they follow
With the first point, you can look at using what they don't like as a villain in your content strategy to create a better emotional connection with them.
To find these you can use Facebook audience insights, and also browse the internet on different sites like Quora and Reddit to see what they are saying.
After you've done some extensive research into them, it'll be much easier to create content for them.
2. News Flash: People who don't know you, don't care about your business.
The second step to building an audience is understanding that you don't matter that much, and it's the audience that you should focus on.
Why?
Because if you're lucky, and people do randomly come across content just about your business, they're less likely to engage with, let alone share.
And even if they would share, their followers often don't know you, so they won't engage with it.
Meaning: It's all about giving.
3. Find where they hang around online
The next step to building an audience is finding out where they hang out online.
More specifically, what social media platforms they use the most, and what websites/forums they visit the most.
Some steps you can take are:
- Check out where the biggest influencers in your industry are active
- Look at where the quantity of accounts in your niche seems to be the most
- Check Google to find some articles that discuss what social media platforms are best for your industry.
- Check the search volume for your industry keywords in Google to see how effective SEO would be (often very effective).
If you are interested in learning SEO, make sure to check out our blogs' SEO category.
Some platforms that often work well are:
- Blogging and SEO
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Facebook (Through a personal profile)
4. Create content that helps your ideal target audience, even if they don't know you.
Many businesses make the mistake of creating branded content all the time, and that's not going to work.
Create content that helps your target audience even if they don't know you. That's what will make them subscribe to your email list, or follow you.
Because earlier we looked at your target audience, this should be a little more simple for you.
If you're in a space where people are more there to find information, rather than be entertained then you want to focus on creating content that solves their problems:
- How to guides
- Tutorials
- Answering questions
If you are in a space where people are there to be entertained, it's worth looking at what makes them laugh or what your audience is entertained by (Gossip? Love stories? Humor?)
To do this, again look at some popular influencers in the industry, then make similar content.
Of course, just because you're in an informational space, doesn't mean you can't crack a joke occasionally.
5. Promote your content
It's not the best content that wins. It's the best promoted content that wins.
That's the truth, so no matter whether you are posting articles on your blog, or are just posting on social media, try to let your existing audience/customers know that you're posting wherever you are.
This will help you give your growth the initial spark of the fire and get you that boost that helps your content become popular — leading to getting suggested/ranked on whatever platform you're on.
What if you don't have an existing audience? Then the process is pretty similar. While you can't promote your content anywhere yet, you want to double down on number #5 which will help you build an audience.
Later on, you can then cross-promote content from one platform to another.
6. Collaborate & Influencer Marketing
The quickest way to get in front of an audience is to find someone who already has it, and collaborates with them.
This may be a popular influencer in your industry.
It may be another business.
From there, you can reach out to them and collaborate on content:
- Interviews
- How-to-guides
- Expert round-ups
It may also be worth signing up for HARO, and seeing what opportunities come flying into your inbox (HARO = Help a Reporter Out which is where reporters look for help and ask for input from business owners/industry experts).
7. Build a Community
This step is optional, but it will definitely help you with:
- Social proof Traffic
- Creating discussion
- Reminding people about your brand
The idea here is to create a Facebook group or some other online community that people can join.
Make sure that you have a core purpose for your community, as that'll help it become more active.
For example, we have the Legiit Facebook group where freelancers can promote themselves, and customers can get special deals on services.
Plus, we also answer questions, and so do our other members, which helps keep it active. If you're literally starting from 0 right now, you can implement this later down the line, when you can get enough people in to make it a community.
Want to learn more? Check out how to grow a Facebook group from 0 to Greatness.
8. Establish Your Businesses Authority
As part of a great content strategy, you'll want to ensure that you are working on establishing yourself as an authority. As this happens, you'll find that you get much more people listening, and asking about your products/services.
Some steps you can take to do this:
- Write in some big publications in your industry as the director of your company
- Publish a press release
- Create in-depth content breaking down topics in your industry
If you're wondering how on earth to publish a press release, some of our freelancers on Legiit sell them. The most popular one is by SpinePR, which you can check out here.
Anyways, back to the point, as your following grows with the tips we've covered throughout this article, you'll naturally establish more and more authority for your business.
Final Thoughts
We hope you have enjoyed this article. If you did, make sure to check out some of our related articles below that are similar to this one.
Download