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Part 5

Harvesting Audience

You can only build something massive by starting with something small to effectively close the distance.

DANNY INY

You’ve chosen your platform and developed the assets and a publishing schedule that attracts a niche audience. Now it’s time to create a system that builds the valuable subscriber base for your company.

Chapter 14

The Metric That Drives the Model

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

FRANK CAPRA

After Facebook’s IPO in 2012, the stock dipped by over 50 percent, down to less than $20 per share. Since then, Facebook’s value has more than quadrupled. The major reason, according to a Fast Company article, is a revision that Facebook made to its management and performance structure.

During the time Facebook’s stock was struggling, Facebook’s ad team had been responsible for revenue, while the product team was focused on user engagement. After months of lackluster results, and a clear lack of a unified team effort, Facebook decided to reward all its employees on their performance against a single metric: revenue. It was argued that “the enterprise would get a whole lot more ideas, and they would be better, more creative, more diverse.” And boy, did this change work. In November of that year, App Ads came out, representing a true collaboration between the ad team and the product team. It was a game changer and added over $1 billion in revenue.

THERE WILL BE ONE TO RULE THEM ALL

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them; One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” J. R. R. TOLKIEN, LORD OF THE RINGS

Like Facebook’s sole focus on revenue, your sole focus is on one simple metric—the subscriber. When you go to sleep at night, you should be thinking of attracting subscribers. When you wake up in the morning, you should have subscribers etched in your brain. The Content Inc. model only works if you can build a loyal audience of subscribers over time. Period.

As Andrew Davis states, “Focusing on creating a subscriber database is developing a customer database before you actually have customers to sell to.” Like a subscription to Netflix or (in days past) a newspaper subscription, your goal is to deliver such amazing value through content that your audience is willing to give some piece of personal information up as a value exchange (e-mail address, home address, etc.). The only difference in your situation from the Netflix example is that you are giving your content away for free, so that you can monetize that relationship at a later point.

John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing, followed a Content Inc. strategy, including a community blog effort and book series, to grow a multimillion-dollar consulting practice. But John’s lightbulb moment came when he added a “sign my guestbook” area to his website in the early 2000s. Instead of just looking at website traffic analytics, John was beginning to build a subscriber database. Those subscribers gave John the ability to launch his consulting network and build a multimillion- dollar platform in the process.

The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon is becoming one of the subscription kings of media. After every show, you’ll see multiple clips from the show (see Chapter 13 on repurposing) shared around social media to promote (you guessed it) subscriptions. After every short clip, you’ll see a humorous clip of Jimmy Fallon asking his audience to subscribe.

The following are all the subscription options for The Tonight Show and NBC that are shown in the text area below each of Fallon’s videos on YouTube: Subscribe NOW to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Watch The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Here’s the time and then get more from Jimmy on twitter

Like him on Facebook

Get more the tonight show, starring Jimmy Fallon by following the tonight show

Like the tonight show

Here’s the tonight show on Tumblr and on and on and on

And even go further on NBC

Subscribe the NBC’s YouTube channel

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

NBC’s Tumblr and NBC’s Google plus

Lots of places for subscribers to get information on going about Jimmy Fallon and NBC.

One of the best content Inc. examples out there comes from Andrew Davis’s claim your fame podcast entitled Quick-Quilting Capital of the World

If you’re not a quilter, this may be the first time you’ve heard of the town Hamilton, Missouri—the quick-quilting capital of the world. The moniker was earned thanks to a down-to-earth, engaging quilt shop owner and her custom-made, YouTube video quilting tutorials. Jenny Doan is the cofounder of the Missouri Star Quilt Co., a quilt shop in Hamilton that boasts the largest selection of pre-cut fabrics in the world.

In 2008, Hamilton was hit hard with the turn of the economy. Residents Jenny and Ron Doan had raised their seven children on Ron’s income as a machinist for the Kansas City Star. Many residents were getting laid off from their jobs, and Jenny and Ron’s kids were becoming concerned about their parents’ financial future. To stay busy, Jenny would sew quilts for family and friends. Though she sewed together the fabric pieces to make a beautiful quilt herself, Jenny needed someone who had a long-arm sewing machine to add the batting—the insulation within the quilt fabric. Demand was so great that it could take nine months to a year to secure the batting-filled fabric. That gave Jenny’s son, Al, an idea.

Al and his sister Sarah invested $24,000 into a long-arm sewing machine, a dozen bolts of fabric, and a building in Hamilton for the operation. The family worked two years on the business without ever bringing home a paycheck. It was challenging to grow the business in a town of just 1,800 people. Al decided they needed a website. But, as we all know, just because you build it, does not mean they will come.

The Doans knew they had to do something different to attract web visitors and drive more online sales. Al suggested Jenny create quilting video tutorials to post on YouTube. With Jenny’s natural and engaging camera personality and Al’s amateur behind-the-scenes abilities, the Missouri Star Quilt Co.’s YouTube channel was created.

The channel received 1,000 subscribers in its first year, 10,000 in year two, and today has close to 250,000 subscribers. Jenny’s videos have reached as many as a half-million views. The videos have driven new traffic to their website, gaining an average of 2,000 online sales per day and making them the world’s largest supplier of pre-cut fabrics. Jenny receives e-mails from individuals all over the world who love watching her videos. From war-torn Iran to South Africa to across the United States, Jenny’s fans love her.

Though this in itself is an amazing story, the success does not stop here. As Missouri Star Quilt Co. grew, so did the need for more staff. To date, Jenny and her family now have 120 employees working in Hamilton. They also invested in three other businesses, two local restaurants, and a bakery. Their retail warehouse displays 20,000 bolts of fabric, and they operate five fabric shops on Hamilton’s main street. They also created a “sew-and-stay” retreat center. By year’s end, they will add another eight fabric shops to their quilting empire.

The Doans don’t necessarily know where the company will go from there. Their focus is on making the best quilts and providing the best products for their customers. In the meantime, they are changing lives and rebuilding a town, one quilt at a time.

THE SUBSCRIBER IMPORTANCE HIERARCHY

As we discussed in Chapter 8, your goal is to build content assets where you have the maximum amount of control. This is especially true for the types of subscribers you attract. While I believe that any fan, follower, or subscriber can be a good thing, they are not equal in value.

For example, let’s say that you build your platform on Facebook. Over time, you’ve been able to attract 50,000 “fans” on that platform.

In November 2014, Facebook made some drastic changes to its platform to hide posts from pages, such as: Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app

Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

While this makes sense for Facebook’s business model to work, at the same time it means that Facebook has the right not to show certain posts. Facebook expert Mari Smith recently stated that “bottom line, most Pages can no longer rely on organic reach to gain solid business results on Facebook. You need to have a consistent content strategy — to drive traffic to your website and build your email list via ads.” I know some businesses that have seen organic reach on Facebook fall to 1 percent or less. At the same time, Scott Linabarger, former content marketing director at Cleveland Clinic, stated that some posts from the hospital saw up to 60 percent organic reach on Facebook. It really doesn’t matter though. You should leverage Facebook however you can, but you need to know that Facebook controls the ultimate reach, not you.

As you analyze your digital footprint and begin to build your audience, your focus needs to be at the top of this hierarchy. Simply put, it comes down to the amount of control you have over the connections.

All subscribers are not created equal. If you have a choice, e-mail subscribers are the most valuable ultimately because of control.

E-mail. Most control and easiest access. Extremely helpful and relevant e-mails will break through the clutter.

Print subscribers. Incredible amount of control. Communication never instantaneous and feedback difficult. Cost challenges due to print and postal charges.

LinkedIn connections. Full control over what you send to followers and connections, but channel is very congested, so it may be challenging to break through with a consistent message.

Twitter followers. Full control over what you send to followers but messages have an eight-second lifespan, so it may be challenging to reach audience regularly.

iTunes subscribers. Full control over the delivery of audio content, but iTunes doesn’t give you access to who subscribes to your content.

Medium/Tumblr/Instagram/Pinterest subscribers. Full control over delivery of content. Users will see your content if they choose to. No ultimate ownership over platform.

YouTube subscribers. Some control over content, but YouTube can decide to hold some of your content back if subscribers aren’t engaging with your content (called “subscriber burn”).

Facebook fans. Facebook continually modifies its algorithm, which is out of your control. Fans may or may not see your content depending on this algorithm, although quality, helpful, and interesting content has the best chance of breaking through. Promotional content almost always is shut down by Facebook.

While you have more control with certain subscription options, Jeff Rohrs, chief marketing officer at Yext and author of Audience, is adamant that no company “owns” its audience: “The reason that the audience is in different places is that no audience is owned. Regardless of whether you’re a major television network, pop star, or professional sports team with rabid fans, you simply do not own your audience. They can get up and leave—mentally or physically—at any time.” This is exactly the reason that amazingly helpful and relevant content is the only way to keep our audience connected to us, regardless of which subscription options you choose to leverage.

YOU NEED AN E-MAIL OFFERING

Regardless of whether you are a YouTube star or a pool guy, you need an e-mail offering to attract subscribers. BuzzFeed, the new media entertainment and news site, gained its popularity due to social sharing on Facebook and Twitter. While this is true, and Facebook and Twitter subscribers are important to BuzzFeed, every page on its site has a promotion to gain e-mail subscribers to its daily e-newsletter.

As well, business publication Fast Company includes a nice little e-mail call to action at the bottom of every article.

Let’s look at the Content Inc. example of EntrepreneurOnFire.com from John Lee Dumas. His main subscription channel is iTunes. This makes sense since John’s key platform comprises audio podcasts. But go to John’s website, and the first thing you’ll see is a call to action for an e-mail subscription.

As you employ your Content Inc. strategy, you need some kind of e-mail offering. This could be a: Daily e-mail newsletter based on your original blog

Daily e-mail newsletter curating the best information from the web

Weekly e-mail newsletter or weekly report offering industry insight

Report offering a fresh idea to your audience every month

TIPS FOR GAINING SUBSCRIBERS

Think about the last time you clicked on an article on social media and it directed you back to the website. If it’s like most sites, the calls to action were all about the products. Perhaps a product demo? Maybe a new product offering?

With a Content Inc. model, every piece of content we send out drives to another piece of content that can be subscribed to (an e-mail offering). At CMI, our best subscription generator is a pop-over (sometimes called a “pop-up”) using a tool called Pippity.

In the past we served up the pop-over after 15 seconds or on the second page of a first-time user’s visit to the site. Recently, we changed this due to the following testing results; we now serve the pop-over when someone leaves the site. Here are the results of our test: Standard Pop-Over

Dates served: 2/1–2/15

Impressions: 11,486

Conversions: 356

Conversion rate: 3.10%

Exit-Only Pop-Over

Dates served: 2/16–3/3

Impressions: 41,683

Conversions: 914

Conversion rate: 2.19%

Although the conversion percentage was lower on exit-only, we decided to keep it in place because of the additional conversions (over 100 percent growth in conversions). This is something you should test out yourself.

Other ways to enhance your subscription opportunities include:

Ask for only an e-mail address, or just a name and e-mail address, for starters. Asking for too much information at first will damage your ability to gain subscribers.

Promote subscriptions on your website and social platforms.

Place subscription options in the footer of your e-mail signature line. Do the same for all your employees.

Leverage SlideShare Pro, where you can upload PowerPoint-type presentations and collect e-mail names (subscriptions) when people download them. (Note: SlideShare is owned by LinkedIn.)

Now a little sidebar on marketing automation. As we’ve discussed, email marketing technology is of critical importance as you build out your audience database. As you begin to get more advanced and consider nurturing content and loyalty content, you may need a more robust system, enter marketing automation technology. Before you select any kind of automation technology, be sure you actually need it. More companies are now invest in marketing automation technology but quickly realized they don’t have the staffing resources and investment dollars to keep up with the platform. When you are ready consider players such as act on software, Mark Couto, Oracle Alcoa, percolate part out, which is owned by salesforce.com, hub spot and Infusionsoft.

CONTENT INC. INSIGHTS

Without an audience, your Content Inc. strategy will not work.

While activity metrics are critical to measure the success of your content, your ultimate goal should always be to get or keep an audience. Laser-focusing on that makes all the difference.

There are a number of ways to build an audience, but not all subscribers are created equal. If you have a choice, go for e-mail first.

Web traffic and social media shares are great, but if you are not building an audience, those may be meaningless metrics. Focus on the metrics that help you build an opt-in audience.