There are 3 certainties in life:
- Death
- Taxes
- You can’t sell much of your product without having an audience
Sure, you could go spend some money on ads, but most online businesses are much better off figuring out how to acquire customers organically before spending a dime.
Audience building should always be your first and main focus.
Two things matter about your audience.
Its size – which speaks for itself.
And its engagement with your content.
Without an engaged audience, size is irrelevant. It’s nothing more than a vanity metric that will massage your ego.
So if you’re serious about selling more digital products online, you need to build an engaged audience of future customers.
I’m going to share 4 ways to do that shortly + show you how 3 Twitter Titans are doing this day in, and day out.
But first, let’s run some numbers to see the impact that both size & engagement can have on your revenue…
How do audience size & engagement impact revenue?
Audience engagement can come in many forms.
In email, you want to pay close attention to open and click-through rates.
On sites like Twitter, you want to pay attention to likes, replies, and retweets.
I’m going to share some thoughts on how to improve Twitter engagement shortly using 3 top creators as examples.
But first, here’s a rough example using email to demonstrate why audience engagement is just as important as audience size.
Example 1 – Bigger audience, lower engagement (opens & clicks)
- Email audience size: 1000 people
- Email open rate: 20% (200 people)
- Email CTR: 5% (10 people)
- Conversion of landing page they visit: 10% (1 customer)
Example 2 – Smaller audience, higher engagement (opens & clicks)
- Email audience size: 500 people
- Email open rate: 40% (200 people)
- Email CTR: 10% (20 people)
- Conversion of landing page they visit: 10% (2 customers)
With half the audience size, engagement is the difference between 1 or 2 sales. Imagine what happens when you start to add a few more 0’s to the numbers in those examples.
Now we’re agreed, engagement is as important (if not more) than audience size…
Here’s how to build an online tribe of future buyers with examples from 3 Twitter Titans.
1. Consistency
Success demands consistency.
To build an audience that’s both growing and engaging with you daily, you need to show up without fail.
Here are how these 3 Twitter Titans practice consistency:
- Justin Welsh: Tweets ~16x per week (avg. 2.2x per day)
- Nicolas Cole: Tweets ~23x per week (avg 3.2 x per day)
- Sahil Bloom: Tweets ~12x per week (avg 1.7x per day)
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2. Value
You have to give value before you ask for any.
You’re not deserving of other people’s engagement if you haven’t given them a strong enough reason to do so.
This means showing up consistently and offering unique, original, or exclusive ideas that can help to change somebody’s life. This doesn’t have to be a monetary change. Sometimes value can be offering a unique perspective that challenges a limited belief or mindset somebody has.
Here are how these 3 Twitter Titans practice delivering value:
Justin Welsh
Justin delivers value to his audience in 2 main ways. First, he offers unique perspectives to challenge the mindset of his audience.
Second, he offers step-by-step breakdowns of how he has done things in his business and how others can as well. This thread is a great example:
Nicolas Cole
Nicolas delivers value to his audience by sharing tips, tricks, and techniques that have worked for him when scaling an online writing business.
Sahil Bloom
Sahil’s approach to delivering value is to take seemingly complex concepts and break them down so that a 6th grader could understand them. This thread is an example:
3. Audience engagement
Reciprocity is a powerful force.
The more you give to others, the more they’ll feel inclined to give back to you.
That’s why engagement has to work both ways. When people engage with your content, you must engage with them in return.
Not only does this help at a tactical level (increasing impressions & engagement), but it also helps at a psychological level by building stronger connections with your audience.
All 3 of these Twitter creators spend time every day responding to comments and engaging with other people’s content.
4. Authenticity
With AI tools like ChatGPT taking the content creation world by storm, one thing will help the top creators prevail…
Authenticity.
Sure, you could build a huge following fast by churning out as much AI-generated, templated content as possible.
Good luck when you try to sell to them.
Authenticity is what creates loyalty and engagement. Here are how these 3 Twitter Titans practice authenticity:
Justin Welsh
Justin demonstrates authenticity by sharing behind-the-scenes numbers from his own business. He’s not just showing you how to do it, but how he’s doing it himself.
Nicolas Cole
Nicolas shows authenticity in the same way as Justin, by sharing some of what goes on behind the scenes.
Sahil Bloom
Sahil’s approach to demonstrating authenticity is slightly different. As well as sharing some of his successes from work, he focuses on sharing aspects from his personal & family life that demonstrate how he embodies the values he shares. H
4 Ways to build an engaged tribe of future customers
If you want to sell digital products online, you’ll need an engaged audience to do so.
By following these 4 steps:
- Consistency
- Value
- Engagement
- Authenticity
…you’ll build a tribe of people engaged in your content and ready to buy from you all year round.
Hope this helps.
Dan Steinhart CPA
P.S. Take this simple 3-minute diagnostic to identify the hidden leverage points in your business that will help you to hit 7 figures faster. Start here.