Audience Building is a Pain for Brands, Not Creators | by Deepika Pundora | Nov, 2023

Every time I think of the word “followers”, I’m reminded of the crowd — gathered in the Roman Republic after Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his own senators.

In the Shakespearean play, the crowd is wickedly fickle — going from supporting Caesar’s cause to rejoicing over his killing to eventually turning their backs on the conspirators after Antony’s rousing speech. Today, audience building can feel a lot like trying to sway such a group of fickle humans.

However, before you misunderstand, let me clarify my position. I’m not saying “fickle” in the demeaning sense of the word. But rather to highlight the general lack of trust people have in brands.

According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, content that persuades and moves people to action has these four elements: storytelling, empathy, relatability, and service.

How many brands score 10/10 on all four?

Very few.

On the other hand, individual creators or “personal brands” tap into these elements with personal stories and manage to overpower the algorithms. It comes naturally to them because their entire brand is built on productizing their life experiences. And guess what? That’s what people have always gravitated towards.

👀 This is also what makes the influencer culture so fascinating. Consumers distrust brands but are willing to trust someone who’s been paid by the brands to parrot the same thing they’ve been saying. Just goes on to show the arbitrary nature of how trust is established.

But of course, not all influencers are the same.

We’re living in an attention-deficit economy today, where content production far exceeds content consumption. And the attention span isn’t getting any bigger. Yes, I’m referring to the now infamous research from 2015 about how the average human attention span is only 8.25 seconds.

And yet, most branded content out there is just SEO content. How do I know this? I run a content writing agency in one of the most saturated spaces today: B2B SaaS.

That’s how.

The end goal of SEO content is to drive leads and traffic, not build a loyal following. While, yes, it has been effective in the past and helped big names like HubSpot build an audience. But in the last decade, the returns from SEO haven’t been as impressive as the investment.

It is also not inexpensive. It does require significant cost and efforts when you’re just starting out in content.

This is why many founders and executives have hopped on the personal branding wagon and started posting on social media. Giants like Cisco are training their employees to be LinkedIn influencers. Because not only does it cost virtually nothing to publish content on social media, but with consistent and informed publishing activity, they’re able to build a brand audience by extension.

To understand what makes audience building so challenging, let’s consider the most common tools of audience building: content and social media.

In most cases, brands that miss the mark with their content lack the following three elements:

1. Authenticity: While most brands today are investing in content, only a handful are investing in original research or access to original research. As a result, most of their content is recycled and regurgitated, lacking the authenticity audience likes.
2. Voice: Even if you’re operating in a seemingly “boring” industry, you cannot create dry, stiff content focused only on providing information. Brands that excel at audience building have a well-defined, easily distinguishable voice, which helps it in standing out.
3. Delight: In the B2B space, the power of delightful, fun content is still vastly underrated, as many brands continue to publish boring content. This is a pity because research has shown entertaining content to be a successful method of captivating the audience.

👀 Please note, when I say “boring” content, I’m referring to the style and delivery of the content, not the subject matter.

Social media levels the playing field for all. SEO, on the other hand, has always been a game of numbers, where the bigger fishes get the biggest advantage.

This is because search engines aren’t as democratic as social algorithms. It might not stand true for all social networks (Hello, Musk-led Twitter!) but for most, there is equity. With access to the same tools and features, individual creators (and smaller companies) can compete with bigger brands. They can attract eyeballs as well as a following by posting value-driven content with little to no cost attached.

Growing an audience takes time. But if you do it consistently, you can enjoy the incremental benefits of loyal supporters, advocates, and even fans. Here’s how.

Change the perspective. If you’re going to publish the same content as everyone, while taking the same angle as everyone else — you’ll fail at attracting the right people, building an audience is a far cry. So, unless you’ve got something fresh to share or a different angle on a topic, it’s better to change the topic itself.

Spark conversations, not just conversions. Is the content you publish insightful? Does it have that sticky quality? Or inspire a different type of thinking? The audience loves a glitch in the matrix, something divergent. And if you can deliver it, you might just bag a loyal follower.

Beat content fatigue with diversity. Even if your content speaks to the audience’s needs, after a while, it’ll start to sound monotonous if there’s no element of surprise. By introducing diversity in content through different formats like videos, infographics, interview features, etc., you can keep your content stack interesting and your audience interested.

Don’t be pushy. Frequent hard (or soft) sell-in content are massive red flags. You want to focus on providing helpful and actionable content, instead of pushing the reader into becoming a lead with every piece you publish.

Remember, time is a currency people spend most consciously today. If you want to rise above the noise and create sticky content, you need to stop imitation of successful examples and start inventing ideas of your own.

Having a unique, recognizable brand personality is the way to the heart of the audience.