Invest in the Audience
Danny Quick works at Ryan Leslie's Superphone, the platform where fans and audiences can reach their idols via the humble text message. Quick wrote this fantastic article "How to Hack The Music Industry: The Paradox of Awareness" on Medium's Cuepoint.
We've mentioned Superhone and Leslie before. Their ethos is very much on building a real, direct relationship with the audience.
Our favourite takeaway from this article is the idea that any and all social media platforms, or methods of communicating with the audience, are 'amplifiers' – and not the thing itself.
It explains that technology is what enables the communication, but it doesn't do the communication for you. It doesn't build the relationships for you.
Frequency > Awareness > Familiarity > Trust > Profit
“In virtually every industry the most trusted brand is also the most profitable. Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit.”
— Seth Godin
This quote Quick highlighted from Godin sums it up excellently. Many believe "top level engagement" (lots of likes on Facebook) means profit. But profit comes from trust. We trust that Coke will sell us refreshing beverages, and that Nike has good running shoes.
The trust comes from familiarity. This is why big brands, that have dominating market shares, still advertise and run campaigns every year. It's to have constant awareness in the minds of the public.
Raising awareness is the act of making sure people who have never heard of you can find out about you – or if they already know about you, are reminded of you. Awareness comes from frequency. Frequency comes with consistent presence. As YouTuber Grace Helbig once phrased so well: "Building your brand online is consistency over time".
