Building an Audience for Your Brand

Hi everyone!

I haven’t written anything for a while now…I was scouring through the social networks and while I was there I made several posts named “How to build an audience” and they turned out quite successful.

People made comments and some of them urged me to make a detailed post about it, so here goes…

The process I described in my posts on LinkedIn has 4 stages that have to be followed in the exact order that is provided. Most companies have an email database of their clients and leads that they store. In most cases these kind of people are people the company has dealt with.

The biggest mistake a corporation or a company can make is to leave that database and not utilize it the proper way. This should be treated as a powerful tool in every company’s marketing arsenal. It is a valuable asset. If utilized properly a brand could build and expand its existing audience and spread its message across to a wider target audience

Let’s take a look at the 4 stages:

stage 1 – create your own community or blog or go to LinkedIn and start a group there. Giving incentives to your company’s employees to participate and add value to these communities is a must…if you or your employees do not go there no one else will. Having all your employees and people that you work with participate on there will eventually populate the community with content. Make sure that it is valuable one and make sure that there is something new added there each day. Creating a community that is busy and interesting will definitely attract other people.

Stage 2- put the email database that you have to good use. Send out invitations to your clients and leads, and make sure that you also send an invitation out to every single partner or affiliate of yours. Inviting them to your community will be something like helping them out, because you already have seeded it with useful info, remember The probability of them joining is pretty high because most of the times these are people you have done business with. They are in the same field of business and you have common interests… This database and these people will give your community a pretty good kick start.

stage 3 – Now, go on and find communities that have a relative focus, communities that target the same audience as yours… and just join them. When you join them you have to work your way up to the top and establish yourself or your profile as an authority in that field. It is not an easy task because it takes time, research and dedicated efforts. But once you achieve that you can easily invite the people of these communities to your own community and expand it to no limit. You are now somebody people want to follow and a person that people seek knowledge from.

stage 4 – When you reach this stage you are probably going to have a big community with lots of interesting posts and topics and a lot of members posting on a daily basis. You now have the ability to approach and invite people that you have never met and you do not know. Remember! The people you approach should be the ones looking for the information from your groups or communities. If you target these kind of people and send them an invitation to your personal or corporate community you will most probably be seen as someone providing interesting and precious information.

Following those 4 stages helped me build several communities online that are oriented in a specific niche and have a special focus. They are now pretty active with lots of interesting info on them and everyone who deals in these specific fields wants to join them…

The process described above does not cost that much!…a little bit of time and efforts on your side is just about enough. If you do not see it as something that you should do, then I would like to ask you this question…

What is the cost of doing nothing?

Having a great deal is not enough…you got to spread the word out. The winning ideas and concepts are the ones that spread well…and this process has exactly that purpose …help you build a big audience that will spread your ideas far and wide.