When tasked with creating an audience development strategy, many a content expert still feels confused, despite being well and truly entrenched in the digital age. What does it mean? What does it need to include? Who are the key players? The process can seem inexplicable. One of the key points to remember when developing your strategy however, is that you do not operate in a vacuum. Creating quality content should be just one (very important) aspect of your audience development strategy. The other pegs on the wheel are your writers, readers, and conversationalists. These are the people that will bring value to your content by sharing and engaging with it.
Let’s Start With Writers
Though traditionally the role of the writer has been to go out, find stories and inform an audience, this is changing with the advent of engaged journalism. It’s no longer enough for journalists to “gather facts and quotes and dispense them to the public,” as Jake Batsell, author of Engaged Journalism: Connecting with Digitally Empowered News Audiences, points out. Rather, writers need to interact with their audiences to develop a conversation. Whether writing blogs, news stories or short copy, getting audience feedback introduces a range of new angles, which can be vital in today’s content-saturated market. Many journalists remain wary of active engagement however, and with good reason. Trolls – we’ve talked about it before. Negative comments dissuade writers from participating in conversation because they have to wade through mountains of spam. One key tool you can use to mitigate this problem is smart moderation.
Smart moderation stops bad comments before they’re posted on your page, ensuring that a healthy conversation flourishes.
This motivates writers to be more involved in the community, which itself can help. As Batsell says, “by asking questions that respect a reader’s intelligence, journalists can raise the quality of the dialogue surrounding their stories.” Enable your writers to be involved in your community by allowing them to connect directly with discerning readers. Cut through the troll mulch.
Who’s Reading?
We’ve all heard the adage “Content is King,” and of course, that’s true. All the bells and whistles of marketing can be immaterial in the face of subpar content. But while developing your quality content, it’s important to keep in mind your readership. Who is your demographic? What are their interests? Where do they obtain their news? What social platforms do they engage with? When are they most likely to interact with your content? The answers to these questions (and more) should inform your audience strategy. The key to finding these answers is analytics. With the ability to track where people are coming from, what’s working, and what opportunities you can capitalize on, understanding your audience is more accessible and vital than ever. The better you know your audience, the better you can position yourself in the marketplace by surfacing engaging content, tailoring promotions, and maximizing your ad revenue. Incorporating a thorough understanding of your current and target audience in your strategy will help you meet your KPIs by ensuring that your content always matches your audience’s interest.
Who’s Engaging?
Gaining a readership is great, and if you’ve done so, congratulations on successfully cultivating your content and credibility. What you need to think about now is your community and quantifying its engagement to inform your strategies. Online communities will continue to grow in support of business innovation, with a projected increase of 30% compared to 2014 growth. It’s imperative to create a welcoming environment for this growing audience. These are the loyal readers that will be your brand advocates, sharing and engaging with your content on an ongoing basis and driving the conversation. To keep these readers engaged, you need to think about what will keep them coming back. Tiered commenting, gamification and rewards for consistent quality contribution can all help audiences feel recognized and respected by building self-esteem. Gamification is also a very effective means of driving engagement since it can be scaled to any audience size at low costs. Once you have incentives in place, don’t forget the need to track and analyze engagement!
It’s great to have people liking and sharing your content, but what does that mean?
How do you use that information to develop your strategy? Without insights into what channel each share is coming from, what time of day, who’s sharing, who’s commenting and the like, it’s difficult to create a gameplan. Engaging your audience is important, but capturing the ROI of that engagement is key to your audience development.
How do you incorporate all three into your audience strategy?
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