A creator’s business is built on their audience and engagement from their audience. Having an engaged audience not only builds a stronger community, it provides you with more monetization opportunities where you truly own your audience—instead of renting attention from social platforms.
So of course, a major question on every creators’ minds is - how do I effectively communicate with my fans? It’s truly the million dollar question for all creator businesses.
In this short guide, we’ll give you the tips you need to craft, plan, and execute your communication with your fans.
Understand your audience
The first step to improving communication with your fans is to understand them - their interests, goals, challenges, and stories. Here’s how to do research on your audience:
Review demographic data from social platforms. Social platforms will typically share demographic data on your followers. Through that, you can better understand your followers’ gender, age, and geographic breakdown. Based on this, you can better craft content that resonates with your fan base. Below is an example of the demographic data that the Beacons media kits show.
Run surveys. You can run more formal surveys or more casual polls and Q and As on social media. The people most likely to respond to surveys are likely your biggest fans so this is a good way to better understand the interests of your biggest fans.
Conversations with super fans. Once you have a better sense of who your super fans are, reach out to them for 1:1 conversations via chat or live via video or phone. You’ll build closer connections with these crucial fans and better understand what they love about your content so you can find and cultivate more super fans.
Leverage the comments. In some of your videos or posts, ask your fans for feedback. You can end your video with something like “let me know what topics you’d like to see me cover in the comments” or “let me know what you want the next video to be on in the comments!”
And don’t leave your followers hanging in the comments - engage with the comments through likes and responses! You’ll make your followers feel heard and drive more engagement with future content and create more devoted fans.
Find channel audience fit
Not all channels are a fit for all audiences, and not all channels are created equal. There is such a thing as channel audience fit - the best channel to connect with your fans. You can find the channel best fit for you based on:
- Where your audience spends their time (you should be able to do this through the audience deep dive above)
- Where you’ve found your audience and where they currently consume your content
- What type of content you like to create
- What type of content your audience likes to consumer
- Which channels are most creator-friendly
- Which channels are growing their user base most quickly
Find message audience fit
After you’ve found channel audience fit, it’s time to find message audience fit. This is the communication style and content that resonates with your audience the most. To find message audience fit, you must first
- Understand what key topics and issues your audience cares about - what is on their mind day in and day out? What do they think about as they fall asleep? What content will they go out of their way to find and consume in their free time?
- Understand the writing or messaging style your audience prefers - does your audience like prose? Or more technical jargon? Or emojis? Or video? Does your audience like more factual communication or emotionally charged messaging?
Collect feedback
Finding the right way to communicate with your fans is an ever evolving process. As you grow your audience and as your audience evolves as people, you’ll need to evolve your approach to creating content and engaging with your audience as well. To stay on top of your ever changing fan base, you should:
- Regularly review and update your strategies based on your analytics
- Review comments from high signal channels (those with your most engaged and highest quality fans)
- Define content pillars based on what core topics your audience cares most about
As you grow as a content creator, continue to better understand your audience and plug them into the right channels and messaging. Finding audience channel and audience messaging fit is a process and journey, not a destination. But starting to understand your audience deeply creates the best foundation for you to grow your following and engage your current and future followers effectively!
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