How To Grow Your Audience By Defining Your Values

If you pursue curiosity and the skills you have, you carve a unique place for yourself.

That way it becomes easier to swerve the competition.

No one wants to find themselves operating in a crowded place, this is what makes your work a commodity. When you strike a balance between what you believe in and your strengths accumulated, it’s the pursuit of your values and worldview that makes you the only.

In this article, I’ll share a framework I have used that has helped me focus on the space that I can explore more and the people I serve. 

It comes down to why should people care? No one needs to create more but create for the right audience, so people want to stay and make a commitment to you. 

This is the structure that defines what you stand for and how you gather the right audience.

The businesses we represent and the skills we bring to the table, change all the time. That means our audience changes with us.

For instance, when I started my business (2008) the focus was on ‘marketing services.’ I was competing with anyone who built websites and produced a ‘brand package.’ This was based on my career within the advertising industry. My work was generic. It was like going to a business event and my topic was ‘business.’

Progressing from a broad ‘marketing services’ space this became more driven with ‘content marketing.’ I became interested in this opportunity to be of use to others based on the industries we represent and sharing knowledge. I even published a book called The Content Revolution that was fed by my curiosity.

Where we are today, my own progression has moved to how businesses can be self-sufficient around the content they create. This means they can build their own audience to address and the opportunity to nurture a community (a valid example is You Are The Media). I have always believed in experimenting and showing you the results. 

My career has changed. We have to be ok with being nimble and reinvention. What I now recognise is that what has kept me going is this balance between not stopping around an area I am interested in, the skills I have, and the people that can help. 

Lets to define this around i) beliefs ii) skills iii) people.

In marketing terms, we’re looking at niche here. What we’re doing though is switching the mirror where the niche was you all along.

The difference is that people become tired when all they do is share information from their industry, which their industry has always kept for years. The people who are not tired are those who can start something they know they cannot stop and the audience finds them. 

What has kept my spark going for the past 10 years (YATM started in 2013) is how people can become self-sufficient by exercising their creative muscle to bring people to their corner of the world. 

You create demand for an audience who are willing to return and remain loyal. You create something that defines you, rather than merge into something that already exists.

The way to look at this is in these steps.

YOUR FUTURE (what you want from it all)

TALENTS (the abilities you bring to the table)

BELIEFS (what you stand for)

THE IDEA (the overlap between your talents and beliefs)

TRANSITION (how this helps other people)

The Product/Service Narrative (the sentence that sums up what you do, and how you help)

This is about finding what you can’t stop by leaning into what you believe in and the skills you have. Blend this with the areas you are good at, and you create your niche.

I’ll use myself as a case study, to show you how it works. 

These are the goals you want to achieve. It’s what makes you happy, so you can look back and the path was shaped how you wanted it to be. This is about passing down your lessons to others. 

If you don’t have a vision or a goal for what you want, then you won’t be able to share the journey with others. The path is going to be filled with disappointment, elation, mistakes, challenges and an immense sense of satisfaction. 

WRITE DOWN YOUR ‘FUTURE’… 

Build a subscribed community, work with the community, create events that people love, serve small businesses who want to be self-sufficient with their content, work with no more than three consulting clients, and share with small businesses how they can build and grow.

This leans into the skills you have already built. However, too many people lean into the technical skills they have as the way they serve the marketplace (so they miss the step after this, ‘beliefs’. This is from the careers that have been supportive to you ie. accountancy, programming, and writing. This relates to professional activity.

WRITE DOWN YOUR ‘TALENTS’…

Writing, content creating, newsletters, event curation, idea generation, bringing people together, nurturing a community.

This is your worldview and what you stand for. Can you incorporate your interests into your work? Can you pursue curiosity?

This is where you find that pulse to keep going. This now transcends your industry skills, into what you believe in, that relates to what you do. It’s what you know, and what you don’t know yet, that you can’t stop doing.

STARTING POINT – what is it that you can’t stop, or even become fixated by (and share with people regularly)?

WHY DO IT – so it doesn’t feel like work (you have to have an interest)

WITH A GOAL – to understand and blaze a trail for something you are interested in 

Embracing what you can’t stop is about going on the attack for a problem you want to solve. When you can be continually motivated, you realise your work improves and becomes more distinct over time. This is because you are concentrated on a specific space to improve your craft, rather than throwing your net out wide. 

The task is to find others with a shared perspective. 

WRITE DOWN YOUR ‘BELIEFS’…

Independence, audience building, self-sufficiency, long-term presence over short-term hits, the strength of a personal brand, live experimentation and delivery of ideas, developing a supportive community. 

This is where you combine your talents and beliefs to a place where you cannot stop. The reward you find is from curiosity with a theme that can attract others.

The effort is the goal to produce and share knowledge that has your stamp to it. The greater the bank of work, fed by your curiosity, helps you grow in confidence. 

A lot comes down to outworking the competition with the skills you have acquired and what you believe in. This is how you get noticed and attract the right audience. 

This is where education is magnified but people lean into you, over time. 

SKILLSETS – content creation, idea generation, bringing people together

BELIEFS – small businesses becoming self-sufficient to build their own audience

= the continual path to explore

WRITE DOWN YOUR ‘IDEA’…

Share a continual narrative that helps people, learn and apply an audience-growing approach to their work, so they are recognised as the most trusted business.

This represents finding affinity with others. This is how what you do, helps others. Can you simplify it so it’s easy to understand?

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go out and find more people, it could mean refining what you do, so you deliver even more value to the audience you already serve. This is what I have found with YATM over the past year.

Make your work relatable, that way you focus on what’s important and people recognise that time with you is worthwhile.

WRITE DOWN THE ‘AUDIENCE TRANSITION’…

Help small businesses and people be seen as a respected/trusted voice (so others stay), people have their own audience to address that isn’t reliant on social media, become independent with their marketing and content creation efforts, helping people be rejuvenated by the content they create, move a passive audience to a nurtured community, help businesses save money by becoming the value and zero ad spend. 

This sums up what you do, in the fewest words possible. It’s a sentence to come back to that helps people understand. 

Caring about how someone else can see the difference, is better than talking about how someone else can see the difference. 

Your goal is where simplicity, persuasion and education go hand in hand. 

In the words of Mark Schaefer, can you answer this question, ‘ONLY WE…’ This becomes the root message in the transformation. It’s about selling clarity, but ok that you have to modify and change. 

If you approach another way, I help (people) achieve (result). It’s how people get from (here) to (here).

WRITE DOWN YOUR ‘NARRATIVE’…

Help small businesses become self-sufficient with their content to grow their own audience.

It is possible to build a library of work and share what you believe in, that attracts the right people (connected by goals, beliefs and personality), so you keep on going. 

Can you be someone who follows their own vision, takes ownership of the skills and interests, and see them as important parts of your future that help others? Rather than simply taking advantage of them to make a quick return, you recognise the importance of distilling, educating, and sharing your personal experience with the world. This helps create work that is meaningful for others to join in.

Exploring the depths of your existing knowledge, following your curiosity, and understanding how others can benefit from it can help you create a unique space that is yours alone.