How To Get People To Care About You 

Getting people to care about you and your work is the path to loyalty and staying for the long term.

It’s easy to be swelled up by your own product and service, or huge pride in what you say and the ideas you have. In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, ‘you don’t get to decide what’s funny, your audience does.’

You can be creating the best work you have ever done, but if the right people don’t care about it, nothing is ever going to come back to you and can feel lonely.

It’s always about the right people who care about you. This is why it is important to put the attention on the people who are aware of you first and then turn the dial up for this small group of people to genuinely care. 

When someone else takes the time to comment on your work, is curious about what you share, cooperates in what you want to progress and commits to what you’re doing, you’ve ignited that spark of a connection.

Let’s take a step back and figure out what it takes for people to make that lasting connection and you become top of mind for someone else. What I’ll share here is what I have learned by keeping You Are The Media going as we head into nine years and why people are still here.

There is nothing wrong about creating work for the sake of creating work. This could be a blog article on a new business win, a LinkedIn post about the start of your day, or a podcast where it’s you and a friend talking about life. These are all fine, it helps to find your voice. However, don’t get frustrated when nobody else cares.

This is a mistake I made. When I started YATM I was effectively creating work in a vacuum (write a blog article, post a blog article). When it comes to the newsletter, I had scraped lists from people who didn’t know me, added email contacts and then I put my feet up for people to arrive (subscribe, open, click). When no one noticed, or couldn’t be bothered to open, I was bewildered. 

How do you get people to be bothered about your work?

Businesses fall into these categories when it comes to something to say (content creation) and other people showing an interest:

1) A great company, but no audience

2) A sizeable marketplace, but not much to say

3) An audience and a marketplace, but struggle to make people care

Is there a category you fall into?

People only start to care when you have something worthy to come back to. This in turn, helps to spark their curiosity and to help build your profile. 

Here’s how you don’t have to live a life in an empty place, where you produce work but no one is there to read, watch, listen or pay attention. 

Here is how you get people to care.

Remember you’re not here to speculate or bring it all back to you. You have to create the value by solving a problem or showing people how it all works (and what success can look like to them). You’re putting someone else in the middle of your world. I have found that it doesn’t work when you share something generic that others can get in more depth, authority and detail elsewhere.

What I realised over the years is to show people what it takes to build an audience, by doing it together. My work is to effectively teach people to build and grow and do it as part of a community, with YATM. This is about figuring it out with the right people. This is why it is important to your success by identifying and targeting your specific audience member (or customer).

You have to pay attention to others and win them over. For instance, if someone sends you an email with a comment related to what you have shared, don’t leave it, reply ASAP!

If you want people to care about your work, figure out who is paying attention and acknowledge them. What happens over time, is that you start to understand what is important to them. You will never be able to force someone to become involved, but you can start by getting them to recognise you.

It’s alway about them, which is why, in time, they can come to you. In the words of US president, at the start of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.’ 

If (the right) people can see you are continually generous with the work you create, it can help trigger their commitment to you. It could be the time you promise to send your newsletter, or the level of thought and insight you provide, that has your stamp to it. If you can give enough (and you enjoy the process too), people will engage and even better when you ask for help, they will step up and help you.

What you can’t do is expect something to happen. If you take that approach, your work becomes campaign led ie. your head is in advertising mode, not open-hand mode.

Getting people to care comes down to seeing the real you. It’s about connecting a lasting connection with your audience. A lot of YATM is about documenting in plain sight what has and hasn’t work. If I can share from my own experience, it just heightens who I am when trying to figure things out.

Confidence plays a big part here. It can be unnerving sharing what doesn’t work, as it puts you in a place that is different from the business impresario that you want people to see. The person who is left with an idea in tatters, or trying to figure things out, can in fact be the best way to let a genuine character shine. This is how people can see for themselves and want to join in. In turn, this gives people a sense of belonging.

When people can see you claim responsibility and invite them to participate, it becomes easier to make that step. People are motivated by an affiliation to something. This is why I created a separate identity for You Are The Media that wasn’t any reference to myself, as I wanted to build something that people would feel comfortable to gather around.

Over the years what starts to happen is that a culture is defined and this is magnified for the occasions to bring people together. That culture is defined by support, ideas, motivation and the joy of being around others. If others can see that, they are more likely to care and step forward with everyone. 

The result of these practical approaches is for people to build trust. To other people you become continually relevant, unforgettable and obvious. What you’re doing is taking your work to a much deeper level where it’s about emotion, not a logical delivery.

One of the biggest opportunities when it comes to creation that leads to audience growth is to step forward with a set of values and then transmit them with the goal for other people to care. 

There is nothing stopping other people to show interest and want to come and join your club.