How to easily build an audience connection around your content

Who is your audience? Who are your fans? Do you know?

Building an audience connection isn't easy, it requires dedication, commitment, and constant reevaluation to fully understand the complexities of creating and maintaining a connection with your audience.

There are a lot of different ways to know who your audience is, and it all starts with one thing - engaging with them.

How do you find out who your audience is?

Understanding who your audience is is vital to any business and a great way of adapting to changes in your consumers' habits in watching, listening, or reading your content.

The best way to know who your audience is, isn’t about what demographic they are (age, gender, location, etc) but why they love you and what content they connect with. These are far more valuable insights. The best way to learn this is through an engaged community where your audience gives you active feedback on your content, tells you what they loved, and what they’d like more of.

Location demographics are mostly irrelevant to online content creators thanks to the widespread accessibility of the internet and internet devices; people across the world are able to view your content far easier than ever before.

Age and gender don't play as big a part in finding out who your audience is as they used to. Content is far more accessible to anyone of any gender, race, or age.

While understanding the above demographics is important and can provide useful insights, it does not define your audience members. In order to truly discover your audience demographics, you need to understand your content and users' specific analytics to see what is engaging with them the most. Try reading through the top comments on your site or the platform you use to discover the most common response - did anything stand out as a common issue or discussion amongst your followers that you can use in your analytics?

If you get regular views, downloads, or reach on social media or your content platforms but aren't receiving any comments, then all you may need to do is ask! Listeners and followers of yours will love to respond when asked a question directly - try ending your next piece of content with an open question to your audience and ask them to leave their views or feedback as a comment.

Your superfans are the lifeblood of what you’re making, and it is paramount to know who they are to learn how to build an even deeper relationship with them. You also want to find others like them to grow a content business that matters and has impact and meaning for your core audience.

How do you find your analytics?

Uncovering your analytics on your content and users is dependent on what platform you use to host your content. Still, all methods rely on using the data captured from your users and followers on your website, platform, or mobile app. There's a plethora of data that is captured by platforms, each with its own benefit in analyzing that, when utilized, can shape your content creation journey for the better.

For example, on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, you can analyze your posts' reach, engagement, and statistics such as clicks on links or visits to your page via each post. On YouTube you can analyze your videos' performance in similar ways - reach, engagement, views, as well as average watch time.

With your own SupaPass mobile app or website, we present you with the ability to analyze each piece of your content to see total views and filter by the collection that each piece of content belongs to, the date it was published, the subscription bundle it is part of, and compare it to different content in your website or mobile app to analyze and contrast how each piece of your content is performing in comparison to each other.

Unlike YouTube, you can analyze each users' analytics to discover who your most engaged fans are within your website or mobile app. Imagine having this information: information vital to understanding what content engages your audience the most.

Another commonly forgotten analytic is to read your comments! The audience response to each piece of content you create can be best seen in the comments section, as your followers will tend to give the most honest and straightforward feedback to your content there. It is easier to read a comment at face value than to analyze analytics when there can be many variables impacting the statistics.

Give your audience a voice and listen to what they have to say. Then you can make more of what they connect with most. What they connect with is often different from what you originally intended to make. Sometimes, something small that happened by chance becomes the most successful content you’ll ever make. Create a space where this serendipity can thrive and where you can actively learn what resonates and hits that special message. The best way to do this is by inviting your audience to comment on your content and share it with their friends.

What do I do with my analytics?

Finding out your analytics is one thing, but acting on them in a way that helps you grow your business is another. Here are some top tips and questions to ask yourself to see how best to act upon your analytics.

What are your most popular videos or podcast episodes? As a speaker or creator, you can sometimes get lost in your own thoughts with what content is the best for you, and you forget to consider what content is best for your audience. Understanding what your most popular piece of content is is a fantastic way to understand who your target audience is - as it may be different to what you want it to be or who you think it is right now. Try finding out these pieces of information from your most popular content:

• How long was this piece of content?
• What was the topic of this piece of content?
• How did you name your content?
• Did you use anything such as a presentation, slides, or accompanying graphics alongside your content?
• How much time and effort did you put into this piece of content?

Understanding the optimum length for your content can be helpful as it means you may discover you can minimize the time you are using creating each piece, as you now know roughly the length of your content needed to make it engage the most.

Knowing the most engaging subjects and topics for your content is an easy win. It is a way to learn how to engage your fans and followers in content that keeps them watching for longer and more regularly, giving them a greater incentive to keep coming back and back again.

How did you title your most popular videos? Without turning into clickbait, hooking your target audience with an interesting title to your content can bring in massive amounts of views (Top Tip! With SupaPass you can send out email and push notifications directly to your followers' mobile phones whenever you release new content - significantly improving your potential reach with your subscribers).

Once you know which pieces of your content are engaging your followers the most, you can begin to discern a formula to use as a basis for your future content.

Building an audience connection is difficult for even the most creative and dedicated content creators. Still, with the power of user and content analytics, you'll have the power to analyze what about your content is working and what your users love about you and your content.