Introduction to Community First

What do fans want? Understanding what motivates your potential audience is the first step to growing your business. First and foremost, it comes down to offering community.

Blogging Your Way to Success?

An audience used to want blogging. Once upon a time, that’s how people would find you. However, the internet has changed a lot since then.

Gone are the days when you could blog and build your business because of it. A blog would get you ranked in Google, getting you traffic to your website. Then, BOOM, you had a business.

Blogging has a role even now, but only after you have established an audience. Blogging is a form of community because audiences today want connection. So, give them what they want.

Interact with your audience. Create a genuine connection. Give your audience a community to belong within.

Blogging isn’t the only way to build community, but it is a necessary one. And nobody is better than authors at giving them written content.

Blog [Community First]

Live Streaming Community

Another great way to create a community is through live streaming. Sit down at your computer and take their questions. Maybe cover an existing article or explore interest in a topic you’re considering, then let your audience ask questions.

I like live streams. For my last YouTube channel, I offered 223 live streams, many over two hours long. That’s how long my voice lasts, apparently.

You’ll gain a lot of insight into your audience’s interests and inspiration on topics they’d like covered, which are both very good things. Your audience will also become genuinely connected with you. I saw this in my community for my prior business and the participation data I’ve collected.

Live stream from your home [Community First]

Podcasting Gives Depth

Besides quick information through blogging and community support through live streaming, there is a third thing audiences want nowadays. They crave depth. However, this need for depth must avoid requiring their full attention, like reading blogs and watching live streams.

How is this deeper understanding conveyed? You can speak directly into the ears of your fans through podcasting. Your audience can listen to your voice while they drive a car, mow the lawn, or sit in an office chair and work.

Take your short blog and expand on the points you make on it to create an hour-long podcast. But you already did that with your live stream event. If so, you can kill two birds with one stone by pulling the audio from that live stream and uploading it as a podcast episode.

Podcasting [Community First]

An Author’s Strength

Everything you do to provide quick and valuable information to build community and provide depth for your audience starts with your website article, i.e., blog. By modifying it, you create a live stream and a podcast. In this way, everything connects.

The great thing about blogging is that authors know how to write. Writing is your strength; use it to grow and support your audience. Everything comes together from writing.

A good analogy highlighting the difference between writing a book and crafting a website article is the difference between movie and television productions. Movie scripts are long and arduous and can take many rewrites. But television episodes are quick and easy once you have the skill, and they are over and done until next week.

Your book is the movie, and blog articles are a weekly television episode. Taking the analogy further, your live stream is a press event, and your podcast is a radio interview. Isn’t that interesting to think about?

You Be You [Community First]

Three Rules

The social media sites your audience prefers are where you should be active. You may not even be active on some sites until you know where your fans are. For example, are you on Bluesky?

What about Snapchat? TikTok? Instagram?

Wherever you end up, carefully consider how to use what that social media site offers in terms of connection, depth, and quickness. Get to know them. For instance, can live stream community events be streamed to it?

Bluesky accepts links from recorded YouTube videos but not live streams. Regarding videos, Bluesky is remarkable for depth and quickness through video links, although perhaps not at the same time, while comments build connections through a community.

That’s my summary of Bluesky for authors building a platform. I’d summarize every social media site here, but learn to do it yourself because social media sites are in a time of dynamic change. You should stand on your own when possible.

Go through your social media sites and determine what content works best there technically:

  • Connection
  • Depth
  • Quickness

Do you have particular social media sites in mind and want my help making the most of them to reach your fans? Send me an email, and we’ll discuss it. Or, set up a one-hour, one-on-one consult, and we’ll discuss what you need to succeed with social media. Either way, I look forward to talking to you.

The wonderful road forward [Community First]

Summary of Community First

Your fans want three things from you: Connection through community, depth of knowledge, and quickness of content. Your job is to give them what they want. Are you ready?

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