Audience

Hi Friend 👋

This week’s video was sparked by a DM from one of you.

And in this issue I want to dive deeper into one specific topic: Your Audience.

To grow an audience you have to know your audience.

Every day as a Creator I understand more and more that this is the foundation of getting the success you want to achieve.

Without having a specific person in mind when publishing, content is just feeding the web. Giving it no destination to reach or impact to achive.

Looking at Creator education this is not surprising.

Most channels that talk about growing an audience continue to share hacks and formulas that will instantly make you go viral.

But virality always follows the same pattern of reaching a huge group of people in a very short time before the next trend fills the feeds.

Making it unlikely to find any kind of sustainable success.

Simon Sinek popularized the phrase: Start with why.

Understanding your motivation for creating is still a golden rule for longevity. But once you have your WHY in place, it's time to go deep on WHO you're making it for.

Who do you want to serve? Who can you help most?

Starting Orbit for Creators, almost two years ago, I thought Content Creators were a very defined group of people who would make up my audience.

But quickly I saw that there is a huge variety in that group with very different wants, desires and needs.

It took me a long time to realize I was trying to replicate Colin and Samir's success by targeting the same broad audience, but offering completely different value. This created a mismatch of expectations and set the channel up for failure.

What I discovered after two seasons of publishing is that who I serve best are

Solo Creators who want to remain solo.

Instead of chasing millions and building a team to manage, most creators I connect with value freedom above everything. They want a self-directed life under their control while making a decent living for their family.

Their pain points and hopes are very different from someone who is using content to scale a business or an entertainer who just wants to build the largest audience possible.

Focusing on one group specifically allowed me to make decisions faster and spot failure sooner.

From choosing guests to designing thumbnails, everything becomes much clearer with knowing the person that sits on the other side of your content.

Understanding how they feel and what transformation you can provide is where sustainable success comes from.

Once you moved beyond the experimentation phase of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, hone in on the people you feel most connected to. Not necessarily the largest one.

And I know thinking through this question can be challenging, especially sitting alone in a room in front of a screen.

To make this easier and fun I’m inviting you to grab one of the remaining founder spots and join our Summer of Progress inside the Orbit Creator Community.

While everyone is going on vacation we’ll focus on one specific area to improve and master. Doors are open until Sunday June 8th.

If you want to get a head start or prefer to work in solitude try this exercise from Ed Lawrence:

Draft a banner for your channel that does two jobs, fast:

1. Set up who your channel is for

2. Make the problem it solves clear

AI Enabler

While I always like to start by thinking on paper, working through this with Chat has been one of the most eye opening conversation to understand where I am and where I want to go.

💛 Valentin

PS: This week I recorded 3 episodes in person. Back to back. It was fun, exhausting and I kinda want to do it again.