Harvesting Audience

 Once you’re done building the base for your content, it’s time to concentrate on ways to increase your audience and convert one-time readers into ongoing subscribers.

As you can see from the chart below, email subscribers are the most valuable type of subscriber (since email allows your business to have the greatest amount of control over your messages and delivery).

Example of harvesting audience

John Jantsch, small-business expert and founder of Duct Tape Marketing, had already started publishing great content — including a community blog effort and a book series — as a way to grow his consulting practice. But John’s true lightbulb moment came in the early 2000s, when he decided to add a “Sign my guestbook” area to his website.

Instead of just looking at passive data such as website traffic analytics to gauge his content’s performance, John realized he could build a database of real people who had actively expressed an interest in what he had to say. This provided him with a way to directly connect and communicate with his subscribers — people who might just be looking for the kinds of services he offered. Through his efforts, John built Duct Tape Marketing into a multimillion dollar business that was once named by Forbes as one of the 100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs.

Next steps

Once you have a strong subscription base for your main content platform, you will want to explore new ways to reach your audience by diversifying the content you create.

Need additional guidance?

Check out some helpful ideas that can make your email communications more compelling and valuable to your audience. Download our e-book, Six Steps to Building a Content Inc. Empire.

[display-posts title=”Related Articles” wrapper_class=”content_inc_related” wrapper=”div” post_type=”contentinc_post” taxonomy=”contentinc_cat” tax_term=”harvesting-audience” include_author=”true” include_date=”true” date_format=”F j, Y” posts_per_page=”5″ order=”DESC” ]