When it comes to marketing we focus on views, likes, listeners, subscribers and so forth. We go for reach. For ‘engagement’. And we want to grow big. To “interview Bill Gates”… But how can one actually do that? Let’s roll back a little.
More subscribers, more followers – more of everything. Sounds legit.
There are the small companies that get rather few views and likes and are trying to get published by big profiles such as Bloomberg or Forbes, and then there are those that struggle and only post reluctantly – afraid of not getting enough likes and views. Of “making a step back”.
But when you are trying to build your audience,- when you are trying to make it “bigger”, you must remember that even the tiniest bit of progress… is still progress.
Too many people believe themselves to be bigger than they actually are. An Instagram model with a million followers certainly has a lot of reach and authority. There are offers flying in, no doubt. But then it turns out that the same Instagram model barely gets by, the offers are few and of low quality. An uphill battle.
You have surely heard this before. Quality over quantity. Well, this applies here too. If you have 100k followers but high engagement is a different ball game altogether. I am not talking about some low effort engagement like leaving a comment once or clicking like. I am talking about a person that actually, literally follows your content, with or without notifications. Like a fan waiting for his favorite band to release the next single.
The steps it takes before you actually get to this big point, like a meeting with someone high-profile are simply many. How to do an interview with Larry King? Probably have quite a few other interviews before that. Bestseller? Probably not the first book you wrote.Behind every big interview are thousands of small interviews. And of course, once more, it’s about depth, not width.
Do smaller blogs and podcasts with smaller audiences too.
You connect deeper with a community that way. Patience and Grinding are grossly underestimated. How many give up on their dream of becoming a great singer just because they had no success after 5 years. They could have trained so much more and harder, try so many things, go at it for so much longer. Just watch some time-lapse of someone training singing for 20 years going from absolutely bad to Mariah Carey level. Is it worth it? Maybe not. Can hard work beat talent? Depends. But you can absolutely learn virtually everything. Grind and patience are so so grossly underestimated, it isn’t even funny.
Back to the interview example. You might do an interview with only 70 views even though you are already big. Why? Turns out this narrow audience had the CFO of a big company in it. This narrow audience had that passionate tech guy you tried to get in touch with and recruit. It’s the right view, not a lot of views Don’t say no even when you made it.
Don’t be afraid of taking a step back. You have to try and taste. Stay humble.