What Friends and Seinfeld Teaches You About Growing Your Audience
Back in the 1990s, NBC had this perfect little plan for their super powered Thursday night line up. They’d run Friends, then some other show, then Seinfeld, and then some other show, then ER. The “other show” slots were where they placed their not-so-popular products that hadn’t yet learned to stand on their own. They were incubator spots. And that’s my recommendation to you, if you’re looking to grow your audience.
Find Your Friends / Seinfeld / ER
If you’re a medium sized or small sized blogger or podcaster, find the content that is most similar to what you’re talking about. Start commenting, contributing, finding ways to augment instead of seem like a clone product. Look for the things they’re NOT covering and make that your deeper specialty. Side note: If you feel you’re truly unique, that’s either really awesome, or it’s going to stink for you.
Don’t latch on like a leech, but do see if you can at least establish a conversational relationship.
Be Your Own Show
TV shows that attempt crossovers essentially suffer. So do comic books (ask any comic writer and most fans). Make sure you’re your own product, and that your product stands alone really well. The model at NBC was that the show in between Friends and Seinfeld either succeeded and graduated to its new date and time, or it went dead quickly.
Think About the Landscape
Consider how your blog improves someone’s day. In fact, here’s homework: Look at your blog as if it’s a book on a shelf. Now, imagine that bookshelf is in Barnes & Noble (or Chapters for my Canadian friends), and you’ve got music, and video, and other things to contend with.
Be holistic in this. Think about your audience’s time. Are they reading/watching/consuming you *and* several other blogs? Or do they even have much time for blogs with work, TV, school, kids, spouses, hobbies that don’t involve keyboards (I’ve heard some exist). How can you make your product SO GOOD that it becomes “appointment viewing?”
That’s what you’ve got to target.
The products I stick with, blog wise, are informational and deliver repeatedly. The videoblogs and Internet TV shows I like all hit me hard and keep me wanting more. In all cases, I feel like I’m learning, that there’s little dead weight in the output of the product, and that I’m getting the best return for my time spent.
You MUST think about your own stuff the same way.
Look For Audience Crossover
I mentioned above that your product had to standalone and that crossovers stunk on TV and comics, but what I didn’t say and should is that AUDIENCE crossover is magic. Wherever you can find ways to get a big product’s audience to interact with you, it’s good. Don’t get onto someone else’s blog and just pimp the hell out of your blog. That won’t work. It just comes off as seeming wayyyyy too self-serving. But it doesn’t hurt to write a follow-on topic really quickly that augments a blog whose audience might really love your stuff.
Product crossover is bad (usually). Audience crossover rocks. Know the difference.
Always Seek to Engage
I’ve recently started a personal “side blog”, where I can do “lab” projects, where I can talk about me for my own sake. Why split it out? Only because my goal, first and foremost here, is to deliver value to YOU and that means ruthlessly cutting some of what I feel isn’t of value.
Yes, it’s cool to know more about the people you read/experience, but pound for pound, and “shelf space” in my personal virtual “store,” I want you getting what you come here for, and I want to engage you.
I don’t find telling you about my little twitter experiments engaging, until they are. : )
Friends and Seinfeld May Be Gone
But the lessons NBC gave us live on. See if you can’t figure some of this into your own media making, and let me know what you think. How does your product compare, compete, and complement other products out there? Have you thought about it much? What can you share?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Comments
Chris,I try to read your blog pretty regularly and this is one of your better posts. As a professional I have to say that you’ve taken another wise tough idea and broken it down very nicely. Keep up the good work.
Kind of off topic, but it makes me wonder why writers (prior or after the strike) haven’t created blogs for the characters on shows like these?
Does “Earl” keep a blog?
Would “George” have?
Would the characters all be connected through social media through these mock pages?
Or perhaps the industry has done this and I’ve missed them?
Great post. I always try to put myself in my reader’s position. Their time is valuable, and I want to give them something worth their time.
BTW, I looked at your twitter experiment. I wasn’t your twitter friend at the time you posted this, so I’d like to add my blog choice is ning. It offers an innovative platform of being able to blog in a social network. I didn’t see any other ning bloggers.
First, very interesting post Chris. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a personal blog myself (already write for the CustomScoop/Media Bullseye products) and this is great advice to keep in mind to produce what I hope will be interesting content.
Elizabeth…”Earl” doesn’t have a blog, but his brother Randy does: http://blog.nbc.com/randy/
I love that show and they always mention Randy’s blog at the end. If only Sheldon from “Big Bang Theory” had one! They do have a “community whiteboard,” though.
This is exactly what Nina Simonds is doing with Spices of Life…
Look for her to pop up, with unique video content, on other food blogs in 2008…
–Steve ( Now off to see what that side blog is all about )
Elizabeth - George doesn’t have a blog - he does have a myspace page though… http://www.myspace.com/georgecostanza
(via http://myspace.com/seinfeld) and seinfeld does have a facebook group, so it’s a start at least. Many tv shows have had blogs in the past - starting out with Dawson Leery from Dawson’s Creek (via dawson’s desktop) back in the day before there were “blogs” and they were just diaries online.
Great article Chris!!
This article made me think, like everything you write. And although I concede with most of your points, I have to disagree strongly in the area of crossovers.
I’m a huge sucker for crossovers. I loved it when NBC had Pheobe’s sister Ursula also be the flaky waitress in Mad About You, and one of the Mad About You peeps was subletting an old apartment to a character on Seinfeld. I ate it up, and thought that they should have done more, and created a whole alternate universe NBC New York that could of propelled their brand into today. They could’ve even broken down the old-media constraints of ’shows and time slots’ and just told me I was watching three hours of my favorite character’s each Thursday in NBC’s ‘Must Watch TV’ mega show. And by making it all one mega-brand, if Seinfield was poopy and decided not to re-sign, his minor cast could have been integrated into other storylines, without having to carry brands of their own (because spinoffs don’t work; I know that no one but me ever watched “Joey”).
To bring it into new media, I’ve also seen it work with success. I call it collaboration. Me and Charlie’s (CinemaPsychic.com) ‘episode 50′ crossover has been hailed to me as some of my best stuff. Or when I run a short segment submitted by someone else, it entertains my viewers while introducing them to the other person’s blog or vlog. You don’t think this would work well in blogging? What if You and a similar blogger were to do a writing exchange and ‘guest post’ to one another’s blog. You don’t think that would be a win-win situation?
I’m new here. Came over from Scott Monty’s blog. I am so glad I did. This was a very good post and it got me thinking, along with everyone else, about the fact that I often try to get right in front of the big guys with content and loose site of what my strengths really are when it comes to blogging.
Thank you so much for the excellent advice and input.
Chris -
I’ve been a visitor to your site for about two weeks and found it most informative. Today’s blog was outstanding! I look forward to coming back. Thanks!
You’re always good and, since you’ve made it a priority, more and more on point.
But as others have already said, this is a rockstar/best-of post. Hie thee to the sidebar, little post!
Amazing article, Chris. I am going to start taking good hard looks at my two blogs and try to get them from Sunday night 9pm to Thursday night after Friends.
Michael