Content Creation | 2 Min Read
#54 - Two Methods to Growing an Audience
When it comes to growing an audience on social media as a content creator there are two possible methods. We cover both in this week's edition.
Hey Friends 👋
This last week I've been thinking quite a bit about audiences. More specifically online audiences and how they can be built and gained on a platform. Now, in this post, I don't want to go into too much depth on why we should build an audience as plenty of other people have covered that. But, instead, I want to focus on how we build an audience from the perspective of a content creator/entrepreneur.
As I think about it there are two possible ways to build an online audience on any given platform.
- Build content directly
- Market and share content
Build content directly
This method would be your more traditional method, think about creating YouTube videos. You create a video on YouTube, people discover it, watch it, check out your channel and then ultimately follow you. Everything is contained within the YouTube ecosystem and there is no cross-pollination of content.
Market and share content
If we carry on our example from the first method, this method would be like taking your YouTube video and then posting links to it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You're taking that original content from one platform and then cross-posting it to other platforms for a different audience to see and enjoy.
Getting the balance
I'd love to know your opinion on this but I think the best approach is a combination of the two. Just building exclusive content and not sharing it elsewhere limits its potential and ultimately the return on investment you can get for it as the creator.
But, also, just sharing content from another platform doesn't work as no one will pay attention to you just spamming links out. Instead, you need to create some form of exclusive content for the platform even if that is just sharing your thoughts, feelings and personality in tweets for example.
Overall, there is a fine balance to strike between the methods used and this balance changes depending on the platform in question. YouTube, for example, doesn't have a way of cross-posting a Tweet in any meaningful way but thrives on the original content people create for it. Twitter on the other hand makes it incredibly easy to cross-post from YouTube and create exclusive content for it.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a clear answer, more of an "it depends" but I would love to know your thoughts so press reply and let me know what you think is the best method for growing an audience.
Thank you for reading as always.
Coner x
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