Understanding audience for content strategy; insights from audience listening
“One of the most common reasons for a product failure is poor audience research.”
The month of March was quite an eye opener; the sessions were a lot more practical and linked with the reality on the ground — something that as a creator I have looked towards. In a fast-developing media landscape like ours, audience building is the same as marketing.The audience you identify with is the motivation that will push you to develop quality content either to match the pace at which your audience is moving or to cover the information gaps that you identify.
Audience research is an important process for startups that helps align an organizational goal.My goal is to reach information deserts with news issues. As much as I know my audience already, there’s however, still a profound need to do proper research that will help in the development of tailor-made content. The month of April is therefore set aside for the audience research and consolidating results as response rates have been projected to take a month.
The session we had with Nigel Mugamu from 263Chat tackled issues of sustainability and a coterie of revenue strategies to stay afloat. As explained earlier, the audience you are creating for is the motivation that will keep you on the edge. Nigel also emphasized that your audience is the source of revenue and therefore, they should be served with content that can motivate them to pay in terms of subscribing and sharing your content
Dedicating the month of April in conducting an audience research therefore means I am now parking the launch of my first podcast which was initially slated for March 2022. This is because I believe it would be wise to have a proper, holistic research so that I can produce content that is needs-based and will be consumed by my target audience instead of imposing certain information. I will use a survey monkey to carry out my audience research as it has been proven that people enjoy being anonymous.
The survey I am set to carry out has been designed in such a way that seeks to understand the perceived value addition of digital media in accessing information by communities. The expected outcome would be an anticipation of adapting to new ways of disseminating information as I need the audience to buy into my proposed information dissemination tool. As much as communities embrace new media, there is always fear associated with inadequacy, especially me being a young woman in a society where our voices and ideas are normally marginalized.
Social media has grown to be the most important tool for information dissemination especially during the COVID-19 pandemic era. Communities have grown to learn and rely on social media for information. I am in the process of designing my social media profiles for the podcast and these will serve my online and diaspora audience. I am however, still set to have listening sessions at community level and for this I will take advantage of community meetings and gatherings such as village meetings, qogelela.
The biggest highlight for this month is how the program has taught me the importance of proper planning as it prevents poor performance. My launch is therefore likely to be after I have graduated from the EJP program. That means at the moment I will continue doing short podcasts that tackle trending issues affecting the communities. My research has informed me that a proper podcast has to be longer than 5 minutes so I need to learn content packaging and other skills to transition from a few minutes to an hour. I am open to constructive criticism about my decision to launch later. I am open to learning and I continue to seek inputs from like-minded start-ups and creators.
