Have you asked why you’re building an online following? Growing a community through content on social media is valuable, but do you know how to track results or ROI? A simple hack, is to focus on which “R” you want to prioritize: reach or relationships?
The likely reason building an online audience through social media, podcasts, and blog content doesn’t deliver ROI for many brands is because many founders don’t take time to write down a clear goal. In the absence of a clear goal, their entire team defaults to vanity metrics like followers, clicks, impressions, or subscribers.
If that’s your goal as a massive Fortune 100 CPG brand you might be able to get away with it, but as a founder, you’re lost. For most brands, it’s rarely massive reach. It’s a specific group of people who can use your product or service and/or invest.
Reach VS Relationship
Understanding if reach or relationships matter, is as simple as understanding which monetary incentive aligns. Is audience size the goal, as it is for news companies that sell ads or NGOs that drive awareness? Or are sales numbers the goal, as they are for founders and businesses?
Is reach your goal or relationships?
Reach is for CPGs, NGOs, and News Organizations
Reach? Prioritizing reach is a numbers game. For people focused on reach numbers themselves have value.
Organizations that value numbers are largely CPG companies that address large markets, news companies selling ads, or NGOs. There are exceptions, but you get my drift.
Content is broad, appealing to a wider audience. You’re more likely to cover stories that provide value in the form of entertainment, shock value, or generate clicks. If you dial it in too narrow you lose numbers.
If you’re reading this, that’s unlikely to be you. You’re more than likely focused on creating new relationships.
Relationships are for startups, brands, and founders
Relationships? Prioritizing relationships is an impact game. For people focused on relationships, numbers themselves don’t have value, sales do.
Numbers can be a helpful data point, but your brand’s content goal is to lead an audience to make a choice. Focusing on relationships means your online strategy is focused, and aims at content with narrow appeal.
If your goal is relationships, you’re likely a small to medium size business (SMB) founder, or startup. Massive numbers aren’t your goal, action is. Your content should be focused and appeal to a very defined community—a profile you should have dialed in. (If you don’t have your audience defined, learn why it’s valuable here)
Your content is about providing replicatable value, building trust, and meeting needs. It should speak directly to your customer, and therefore exclude the general public. Truthfully, the more people you leave out, to focus on your ideal audience, the better.
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Which “R” are you prioritizing? Is it reach, where your monetary incentive is directly tied to numbers? OR is it relationships where your monetary incentive the result of converting new customers? With this knowledge, does it change how you build content? It should.
