Creating content, launching a freelance career, or a small company all have some of the same requirements. Growing your audience is something that is not just something that is nice to have – it is a must.
While many content creators do it for the love of what they do (and don’t mind how big their audience is), making money from it, securing brand deals, and making it much bigger can be one way to be able to do what you love without regular jobs taking up your energy.
So, if you are one of the many people looking at how you can grow your audience, start making more money, and get recognition for your work – here are some tips to get you started.
Consistency
A problem that many content creators and people who seek to make money online is time constraints. Often, those time constraints mean that you aren’t able to create as often as you’d like. And if that is the case, then you likely have an issue with consistency.
Audiences like to see regular posting, and if you’ve ever seen the comment section after a loved content creator hasn’t posted, it has a lot of ‘where have you been!’ comments. When you only have a short amount of time to create, then take what you make and cut it up into multiple shorter options. Start scheduling posts, even fillers, to keep the content coming.
Share The Love
Growing your audience means you need to be seen, and to be seen; you need to be ‘out there’. If you post on specific platforms, then make sure you schedule time to go and read or listen to other people. Like their content, follow it, share it, and comment too. Interact on their posts, and they will interact on yours. Try to make sure that there is some audience overlap, and don’t do it for the sake of it.
If you really don’t have time for this, then hire a VA to help you manage it. They can like and share content on your media channels while you work on creation or while you work at your other job if you have one.
Preferences
To understand your audience, you need to spend time researching them. Who are your most engaged people? Where do they engage the most? What do they react to? Start to pay attention to your audience as they are now (sometimes the smaller, the better to start with), and pivot what you are doing to resonate with them more.
For those who have a newsletter, make sure that you are keeping good newsletter hygiene so that your emails can be personalized and the right people can see the right things.
Digital Marketing
Everything that you are doing will feed into the digital marketing umbrella, but it is important that you understand digital marketing as much as possible. The longer you create content, the better you will get at digital marketing – as they run along the same lines. A strategy is one of the first things you will need to create. Content creation is considered marketing, although many content creators (bloggers and influencers), when they get started, might not realize it.
Collaboration
As an influencer, blogger, or content creator – there are likely a range of content creators that you personally watch and enjoy. Most of the time, they are open to collaborations. And many brands are happy to work with both huge and micro-influencers and content creators. All you need to do is ask. Find brands that fit with your lifestyle and ethos and other contract creators that have an audience that is similar to your own.
Experiment
Every month, new features are arriving on all of our favorite social media platforms, and if you are shying away from using them, you will be missing out. These features create a sense of FOMO for the platform users, and they tend to flock to use them – being an early adopter can put you in front of new people pretty quickly. You can also experiment with your style and content and see what happens.
Authenticity
If there is one thing that the internet is good at, it is spotting a fake and exposing them. Vegan creators spotted eating meat, fitness influencers having liposuction, and beauty gurus using filters and beauty lights. All of these things typically get sniffed out and exposed – and the biggest thing is that the lack of authenticity loses most of their loyal audience.
Over time, one thing that will happen is that you will naturally find your voice – and your loyal audience will come to know and trust it – so long as you have been authentic with it.
Making money being a content creator isn’t an overnight explosion of success; it takes time and consistency to do. One thing that can make a huge difference is knowing that content creation is a business, and it should be treated like one – and it is never too late to apply that: From Zero to Entrepreneur: 7 Steps to Starting Your Own Business with No Experience – The Rebels Den.
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