Strategy to Build an Audience (Without Spending a Dime!)

Are people with 500K or 1M followers on their blog or YouTube channel special? Nope. Anyone can build an audience with these proven steps.


Phase I – Become a Content Machine


1) Get Focused
If you're working with somebody else on it, you have to map out: Clear expectations Clear guidelines Clear responsibilities Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure.

2) Batch Content Creation
It doesn’t matter if you decide to start with a podcast, blog posts or even video  – batching will save you time and headaches.
Once you choose your topic, record at least five at a time so you come flying out of the gate when you launch.
This way, you’re not constantly worrying about the next one and the one after that, because you already have five in the can.

3) Get Help From Guests
But if you're interviewing people on your podcast or videos, get those people to help you with promotion.
Say, “Hey, look, I could use your help promoting this,” and they might send it to their email list or share it on their social networks.
The least they might give you is a Tweet.

4) Keep It Consistent
Growth Everywhere is my weekly podcast where I interview someone on each episode.
I do it all on Thursdays and I will do two or three interviews in a day.
So each month I'm probably getting 8 to 12 interviews.

5) Repurpose Content Over and Over
You take one piece of content, like a video, and turn it into audio then a blog post, etc.
Say you turn your daily videos into 30 podcasts, and then turn these into four blog posts.
Now you have a machine because you’re creating 64 pieces of content in a month.

Phase II – Promotion
You started out with a topic, you picked a platform, you get your guests to promote it a little bit.
You remained consistent and you're a content machine.
These are the first things that you need to do to start becoming successful.

6) Ignore Social Media
This is going to be controversial, but I would ignore social media in the beginning because you just don't have the time for it. You have to prioritize. If you're starting from scratch, you might not have many resources. Your audience might be hanging out on Instagram, so it might not make sense to do a podcast. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but you’ve got to think about where your audience is spending their time and then produce content that's native to them and think about what works best for you. If you can fit in social media, go for it. But it’s more important to stick to your core content schedule. 7) Collaborate At this point, you can start to think about collaborations.
This goes further than just having a guest on your podcast.
This is more of a trade.

8) Forget the Audience
You don't form a point of view until you start to talk about it, until you start to develop your own voice.
When you start to develop your own voice, you'll find that you're not following people as much anymore.
It's totally fine to follow people in the beginning, but as you develop more experience, you won’t be following people as much and you'll become your own person.

9) Create Ego-Bait Pieces
Or one that gets a million downloads a month and it's all people who are just starting out in life?
It just depends on what you're looking for and who you're planning to sell to.
You’ve got to know who you’re targeting.

10) Look at Your Analytics
Look at your top-performing blog posts, look at your top-performing videos, look at your top-performing podcasts.
If you find something that works, a title that works, do it again!
Look at the stuff that performs, try to double down on those, and maybe 20-30% of the time, try new things that you haven't done before and just keep experimenting.

The Flywheel Effect
Remember, success compounds, so if you're patient and have a unique point of view, you're going to do great.
Watch parts 1 & 2 of the video of this blog: Find more great videos on business growth, marketing, interviews with successful entrepreneurs, and more on our YouTube channel !

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