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Expand Your Audience

Would you like to see more value brought to the media you make? And by value, I mean the value of conversations and engaged participants and people who matter? I’m thinking that precious few of you will answer no. You want a more engaged audience, a group of passionate people who care what’s written about, spoken about, covered in your videos. One way to do this is to THINK about expanding your audience, and consider what might bring the conversation outside of the fishbowl

The Fishbowl

Briefly, the fishbowl is our analogy for conversations and topics that make perfect sense within your social circle or sphere. As a lot of you are on twitter, if I showed you an upside down bluebird, you’d know what that symbol meant without me even explaining it. If I used it to say this is how I feel, you’d all smirk at the joke. And yet, MILLIONS of people, even Internet people, would have no idea. One goal in expanding your audience, is to talk outside of the fishbowl, even a little bit. Think of it as going off-topic.

My only trick on this is that I still keep the framing of my posts relevant to the larger goal of the blog.

Consider Who You Want to Reach

With my post, Glenda Watson Hyatt Rocks, I wanted to reach people who might need shaking out of their personal worries and concerns, by seeing how someone remarkable does something with great effort to become part of the conversation. Glenda, by the way, is every bit the same as all of us, and has her passions, frustrations, and favorite blog topics. She just makes more effort to be part of the conversation.

With Help Send a Woman to College, we looked at how social media (some YouTube, some Twitter, a blog post) could motivate us to take a social cause as our own, feel good about it, and execute on it. I wanted to reach people who thought social media was only about technology, and/or only about fluffy topic matter.

With Video is Power Chords, there were two goals. One, I wanted to play the Free Hugs video again. Why? Because it’s universal in making us feel good. But two, I wanted to point out that video is a powerful medium and it moves us, and that we should consider it in our media making mix. This went to two audiences at once: everyone and businesses. (Obviously, businesses fits nicely into “everyone.”)

And finally, with My Family Life, I showed you the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to be me from a home perspective, so that you better understood the man inside the machine. Further, however, what happened was that YOU thought about your relationship with your family and your media, and you felt a kinship (some of you) with what I described.

Consider Ways to Expand YOUR Audience

If you have a podcast about how to use Mac products, consider special episodes where you visit schools and talk to educators about how Macs work or don’t for the school world. If you’re blogging about golf, is there an angle where you could tell stories that non-golfers would appreciate, like the funniest non-golf things ever heard on a golf course? Look for the ways your media can adapt, even for a few posts, to build a relationship outside your core base.

It might just help you grow a more engaged, diverse, and conversational user base.

Any ideas? What else should we do here?

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Photo credit, TurboJoe

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