Come for the X, stay for the Y

Let’s talk about your audience.

And for the avoidance of doubt:

The contacts in your address book are not your audience.

Your connections on LinkedIn are not your audience.

The visitors to your website are not your audience.

(Although all these groups will have people who could be in your audience.)

Your audience are those people who’ve raised a hand to say “I want to be in the Glen club.”

Not just people in your extended network, or people who’ve come across you online. People who’ve actually opted in somewhere along the line.

Usually, but not always, that means they’ve given you their email address and their consent to contact them.

It’s an important distinction because with a real audience, your course will be more successful more quickly. (You’ll also find it easier to validate and hone your course idea.)

Distilling audience-building to its essential components, you need to give people two things:

1. A reason to join the Glen club

2. A reason to stay in the Glen club

For me, the reason for people to join my “club” has been my Online Course Sprint (which I’m relaunching on Monday by the way - spread the word) and other freebies like my 100+ Helpful Hints for Course Creators.

My reason for people to stay is this newsletter and my blog posts.

Couple of quick tips for when you think about this:

Your first reason needs to be distinctive and desirable.

Your second reason needs to be regular, and reliably valuable.

So…

What will make people want to join your club, and what will make them want to stay?

See you soon,

Glen