Don’t Build An Audience — Connect To One

The fastest way to grow your audience is to connect to a community.

Most creators struggle to build an audience because they approach it the wrong way.

They try to build an audience from scratch, when they’d be better served to connect to an existing one.

The fastest way to grow your audience is to connect to a community.

I’m going to break down a couple ways to do that in this post, but first there’s a key concept you need to wrap your head around…

Your Audience Already Exists

Your job is not to “invent” your audience.

You may assume your goal is to attract people interested in what you do and build your audience from the ground up.

That’s not necessarily true.

You don’t need to build an audience from scratch — you need to find and connect to an audience that already exists and is looking for someone like you to connect and lead them!

This concept comes from the excellent Seth Godin book Tribes.

Godin suggests there are “tribes” of people with shared interests, beliefs, and desires.

But those people are often disconnected from each other…until someone creates an opportunity for them to connect.

Members of any tribe are looking for someone to step forward with their work, raise their hand, and essentially say, “Hey, we’re gathering over here if you’re interested!”

When you adopt this approach, you realize your goal isn’t to build an audience around your creations, but to use your creations to create a space for a community that already exists to connect with each other.

Put another way:

Your job isn’t to connect an audience to you — it’s to connect a community to itself.

This is a massive shift in thinking for most creators.

But the irony of this approach is when you embrace it you wind up at the center of a community and that’s a powerful place to be.

When you connect and serve a community, you wind up attracting a powerful audience for…