Build an Army, Not an Audience.

In the era of traditional media, audiences were powerful. They were also all you could build.

Today, in an age that’s increasingly mobile, the most important organizing model isn’t an audience, but an army. By army, I mean harnessing a network of people to organize action, develop skills and ultimately take on a mission. In an army, people assume different roles depending on their commitment, engagement or skills — all things an audience alone cannot.

The value of building an army over an audience is evident in the most important businesses created over the last 10 years. These businesses grew through network effects instead of just having an audience. In a network, the simple interactions between people have far more lasting value — which also means stronger opportunities for growth and revenue.

Think about it. In 2016, would you rather have started Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp or… BuzzFeed?

BuzzFeed is the gold standard of a modern audience business. NBCUniversal valued it at $1.5 billion when they invested $200 million in August 2015. Certainly not chump change. Yet, it is significantly smaller than any network effects businesses created at the same time.

Facebook is barely a year older than BuzzFeed, and beyond flawlessly executing the most successful business launched in the social era, it continues to fuel its growth by acquiring networks like Instagram ($1 billion in 2012) and WhatsApp($19 billion in 2014). It has never purchased an audience business.

What is Facebook focused on that BuzzFeed isn’t? Facebook is building a powerful advertising business by choosing to invest in armies over audiences, and redefining the media landscape in the process.

For entrepreneurs starting out or seasoned marketers everywhere, choosing to build an army — not just an audience — can put you on a course to create your own network effects, not rent someone else’s.

T. Boone Pickens and His Wind Energy Army

I first saw the power of an online army from T. Boone Pickens in July 2008. This was in the early days of the Obama campaign, before the “donate $20 now” emails became ubiquitous and every online campaign followed the same playbook.

One morning I walked into the office at Ning and saw that we had a rapidly growing niche network that had sprung up overnight. It was created by T. Boone Pickens. I thought, “Wait. The old oil tycoon? Seriously?” It was legit. He and his team had launched a “new energy army” for U.S. energy independence. Within a month, this bipartisan Pickens Plan “army” was 100,000-strong, fueled by “lieutenants” passionate about the cause.

These lieutenants weren’t just looking to subscribe to an email list, donate money or share an article. They wanted to take action.

Specifically, they wanted to take action with other organizers who cared about energy independence as much as they did. This wasn’t about reading, liking and sharing posts by T. Boone. This was about meeting other energy advocates all over the country, building relationships with them and channeling their collective action into meaningful results.

Those results were astounding. They grew a 200,000+ national-scale volunteer organization with only seven part-time remote regional leaders and a niche “social action” network. Volunteer activities included letters to the editor and opinion editorials, personal contact with elected officials, local efforts to sign up new members for their army and local meetings for supporters to take more creative action on the ground.

When the new energy army was ready to take on lobbying Congress, the network had been in place for five months. Within 24 hours of announcing the congressional district lobbying program, over 1,000 members stepped forward, volunteering to identify new supporters in their district, submit op-eds and letters to the editor and host meetings in-district with other organizers and elected officials. These volunteer district leaders reached 90% of congressional districts. Two-thirds of them had direct contact with their member of Congress.

Ultimately, this army translated their efforts into billions of new dollars for wind energy in the 2008 Stimulus package. Their impact wasn’t number of followers or shares, but cold, hard cash and a direct impact on the system.

From 2008 through 2010, niche networks dedicated to Tea Party candidates, and the Tea Party movement in general, grew rapidly by seeking armies, not audiences, and organizers, not just fundraisers.

Fast forward to 2016. I knew Bernie Sanders was a force to be reckoned withwhen I read this. He’s proof today that if you want money, start by asking people to contribute their time and — increasingly — their expertise.

The Difference Between an Army and an Audience

Armies don’t exist without soldiers, or members attracted to the cause and community offered by a purpose-driven organization. Three things set a member apart from a viewer or reader:

• A mission and an identity. They initially join for a clear mission that’s important to them. Whether it’s a cause, specialty, condition or goal, there is a defined identity and meaningful role to play as a part of the organization.
• Motivated by the relationships they have with each other. Bands of brothers (and sisters) can succeed at the impossible. Team energy, dynamics and loyalty produce amazing results. It’s not about the general “firing up the troops,” it’s about the people you’re in the foxhole with.
• Have paths to level up to more responsibility and leadership. An army isn’t organized as a mass of people all asked to take the same action. Members operate in a self-organizing system that have different roles where they can take on greater responsibility as they go. “Move up the ranks” is a phrase for a reason.

Even if only a subset of your total followers are members, you will still have a more valuable asset than an audience alone. And online armies aren’t exclusive to politics. They’re showing up in parks and gyms around the world.

How Kayla Itsines Harnessed an Army to Build a Multi-Million Dollar Fitness Empire

Health and fitness is an obvious place to build an army, but Kayla Itsines breaks the mold. She’s a 24-year-old personal trainer from Melbourne, Australia who — without a cent of venture capital or a technical co-founder — has created a massive movement and multi-million dollar business by harnessing the relationships between her followers globally.

More than her own 4.8M followers on Instagram, 5.5M fans on Facebook and an email list of millions of women who love her Bikini Body Guide (BBG), women who love Kayla want to meet and build relationships with each other. BBG participants have contributed 1M photos to #kaylasarmy and another 1.5M to#kaylaitsines to track and support their progress. They’ve created groups on their own and organized local events with their own sponsors.

(courtesy of Instagram)

Kayla’s World Tour is a handful of live events in cities from New York to Amsterdam where sponsors keep them free for up to 1,200 women at a time. Brands (and startups) everywhere envy the movement Kayla’s created. Just look at her New York Boot Camp:

She’s given her followers ways to “level-up” with women like them both online and in the real world, and has built a multi-million dollar business doing it. She’s even launched her own app where members pay $19.99/mo for access to premium programs and members (although not without creating a cautionary tale of the risks of custom software development).

While social media is crucial, Kayla’s Army wouldn’t be the phenomenon it is without ways for her most passionate fans to meet equally passionate people and do more than read or share. Her movement is fueled by the network of many-to-many relationships BBG fans are building with each other, not just with her.

While counterintuitive to many, if all Kayla Itsines asked her followers to do was like a page, they probably wouldn’t. When you approach people as an audience, those requests feel empty, both to you and to them. But by offering a path to more meaningful contributions and increased responsibilities, people are motivated to message, meet up and encourage each other. These actions reinforce their identity as members of a movement and have the natural effect of bringing inmore people at every level.

In fact, by offering members different ways to level-up, Kayla’s built both an army *and* an audience. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around.

Want to Build an Army? It’s Easier Than You Think.

While social platforms from Facebook to LinkedIn make it easy to build audiences quickly, they aren’t designed for you to build your own sustainable army or network over the long haul. Just ask brands that advertised to fans, only to find out they had to pay to access them a second time a few years later.

Enterprising entrepreneurs, forward-thinking organizations and savvy marketers embrace other people’s platforms while following a few simple rules for translating this effort into armies of their own:

Give people a way to level up beyond sharing or donating alone. Successful movements offer members a journey from newbie to leader. When armies ask members to solve big challenges, contribute their expertise or take specific, meaningful actions, it can produce results no amount of money can buy. Just ask Jeb Bush.

Sometimes an idea alone spawns grassroot contributions. However, any organizer, entrepreneur or marketer can sketch out a set of actions that build relationships between members and allow your most passionate members to lead. Don’t be afraid to give people more to do than share.

Embrace identities. Your most passionate customers, fans and followers want an identity that is meaningful to them. Beliebers, Berners and Little Monsters are all names that different armies have taken as their own. While proactively trying to make an identity “happen” is about as probable as you making a video “go viral,” choosing a name or campaign where an identity can emerge — and then embracing it when it does — is a great sign that you have an army in the making.

Build your spokes…but invest in a hub. Use social channels and the web to attract people, but have a hub — a website, your own niche network or your own app — where your most passionate people can meet, message and take on leadership roles. With 86% of time spent on mobile happening in native apps, creating funnels into messaging-based apps is critical (and easier than ever before).

Where most people are satisfied publishing to an audience on someone else’s platform, those that understand the power of building an army seek out their own network effects, member data and the analytics to drive greater impact from the people most invested in their success.

While not everyone has an idea, mission or cause that feeds an army, those who do have a tremendous opportunity in front of them. Today’s landscape is riddled with entrepreneurs, companies and marketers who settled for an audience when they could have built an army. These aren’t just missed business opportunities, but missed connections for the passionate fans who would have enlisted instantly.

People are made for missions, identities and to have an impact. By aiming for an army, you can achieve more than you ever thought possible, and create networks that need to exist in the world along the way.

This article was originally published on Linkedin Pulse. Gina Bianchini is the CEO and founder of Mightybell. Follow Gina on Twitter.