The Psychology of Building an Audience

Building an audience for your work is a performance.

1. Amplify your personality
2. be provocative, but with a purpose
3. Have a compelling point of view
4. Harness the power of stories
5. Give people a reason to find you interesting
6. Add in emotional resonance

Hope is the additive necessary to turn captivation into the foundation of likability. Nobody wants to hear about your problems other than your therapist. They want you to help them solve theirs.

Respect the expectations of your audience. Experiment, but retain the essence.

What you create, say and do in public carries more weight than what you do in private. Your words and actions count. Choose them wisely.

Vulnerability creates emotional resonance, which in turn makes our content contagious. But don't treat audience as a therapist. Use this very wisely. If there is no redemption, no growth, or a lesson worth sharing, then it’s not ready for public consumption.

Perceptiveness is the ability to read between the lines of what people are saying and doing to understand the intentions behind those words and deeds. Compassion is the willingness to act on perceptiveness through love, kindness and active care.

Take into account the context in which your audience consume your content. Focus on humanizing the metrics of your audience: 

1. hearts, instead of eyeballs; 
2. listeners instead of downloads; 
3. Meaningful conversations instead of article views.

You don't need to be defensive with critics. Also - not all critics are the same. If you can’t handle getting tough feedback from people who care about you, it becomes difficult to take it from people you don’t know.