Would Others Miss You If You Were Gone?
Do you want to become someone who matters? Doesn’t it sound better to inspire others rather than just be present with everyone else out there?
When you create content you have to take responsibility for what you do and produce.
I am writing this because this was something that Ian Rhodes and myself faced recently with our twice-weekly Marketing Homebrew podcast. We had noticed a sharp; no…massive drop in listeners in a matter of a week. People were deciding not to listen.
October represented a record month with over 1,500 downloads per month. This represented a noticeable month on month increase since June (we’ve been doing this for eight months now).
We decided to change tact with the format of the show and our audience simply switched off.
The listeners plummeted over the space of a week at the beginning of November. We had to change what we believed would work into something else. We are now in the process of getting our audience back.
Some Key Lessons Learnt
Up until the end of last week, if we stopped podcasting no one would have missed us.
The reason we changed was that we believed that the momentum was building to take the show over the 2,000 monthly listeners mark.
We’re now back in the saddle and looking to get back those that left us.
LESSON 1:
If you want something to work you have to constantly question your beliefs. We believed that changing the show would take the show to the next step, it did the opposite.
We lost our objective. The plan was to have a run of shows that invited listeners to share their challenges they were facing with their content marketing efforts.
The whole podcast has been focused on education, not a conversion tool. Everything we have done has been consistent, not to manipulate a hidden agenda disguised as a sales pitch. We were looking to give the show to others to ask us, rather than Ian and myself to provide value to others. This was where the problem lay.
LESSON 2:
You can’t deviate from the value you provide to others.
One of the worst things that we could have done would be to turn a blind eye to what we had changed.
If we hadn’t have taken time to analyse the stats and the weekly listener numbers, we would have probably carried on. The only acknowledgement we would have had would be that the questions we were asking people to send in would have came to a grinding halt.
By looking at the loss of numbers, we were able to action quickly, rather than let it prolong into a slow demise.
LESSON 3:
Measurement is key. If you don’t use measurement to provide guidance what you are creating, how can you understand what resonates with an audience?
When you enable a quick response from a solid judgement and then action, you can take things in a more positive direction.
The decision is for Ian and myself to share with our listeners what they need to know. Everything we have done so far has been to share our knowledge in a way that we probably weren’t aware, but it was working. People were listening to us to provide our perspective and what we have learnt.
By bringing this back on course, the listeners from Friday is slowly getting things on track. This is something that we have to be aware of and the monthly listening figures is a strong barometer to acknowledge that what we are doing is being acknowledged by an audience. Our audience was growing in countries such as Japan and Latvia (nod to Ian there for the conference he was part of).
LESSON 4:
When you take actions they need to be monitored.
Whilst this show gives us a chance to listen to one another’s opinion, it’s not just about us, it’s about the people who listen to the show in their cars, for the walk with their dog (as John Jocham tells us) and when listening at home.
What we create has to be for other people. We want the Marketing Homebrew to resonate with others.
LESSON 5:
You have to acknowledge your audience
Lets bring things back to your business. If you put all the content that you create (from your website pages, your social channels through to any print) and locked it away for one week, would people miss you if you were gone?
You have to acknowledge that what you create is on a different planet than focusing on the new logo and the colour for the new branding.
If you are going to be missed by your audience, first of all you have to have built that audience.
Your company needs to put itself in a space that can understand others. It’s not something that you have to leave to others ie. someone else monitoring figures, the buck firmly stops with you and your business. In the words of Napoleon Hill, “Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.”
Rounding Up
Lets put a final spin on this. Businesses have created the noise and we have to hold our hands up. We have all created the direct mail to bin, the adverts to skip on YouTube and the banner ads that are now easier to block.
We have also helped create the reason for others to believe in us and for every manipulative message, there is one that is looking to serve an audience and become someone who matters.
An audience can decide that the barrage of information is worthy, informed, distrustful or just flat. If businesses are going to look to keep their audience engaged and come back for more, this goes beyond creating more content.
It is about to how the content we create is received and to be responsible for every piece of value or noise we create.
Did we make the right decision? We drew our line in the sand on Friday’s show (16th November) and made the announcement that we f***** up. Why not have a listen.
If you’re a new listener, let us know what you think and if you are a loyal Homebrewer and still with us, we thank you for sticking with us, you’re the best.
