Stranger / Familiar / Fan
Phil Ranta
COO, Fixated - Digital Media Veteran / Building Digital Businesses, Moving Culture
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How are you addressing your three audiences?
Every piece of content you create will hit three different audiences. Let's do this D&D-style:
???? The Stranger: Mysterious and faceless, they enter your content through the front door we call 'algorithm'. Taking a front-row seat to your show, they bellow, "Give me the experience I'm looking for," but shares no indication of what that experience should be. Be they a friend or a foe? Only your content can decide...
???? The Familiar: A face you've seen before, but as if it was in a dream dreamt long ago. They know you, they may even like you, but would happily turn you into the Royal Guard for a sack of gold or buffed armor. Will they journey with you, or fall-in with the local thieves what stole your journeyman's diary? Only your content can decide...
????♂?The Fan: A loyal and friendly face. "Come, enjoy a flagon of mead and tell me a tale!" says your dear acquaintance as they kick their boots onto the gnarled wooden table. You can sit and chat of memories past, or enjoy a shared silence. Will this loyalty know no end, despite the cruel passage of time? Only your content can decide.
You sit at a tavern, polishing your dagger over a meal of baked pigeon pie. Suddenly, the Orc barkeep freezes as a slamming door echoes through the hall.
You turn to see these three people enter at once expectantly. The air is tense. You have time to say something, but the three are impatient. A wrong move can turn friend into foe, or foe into big-bad.
What say you, traveller?
Roll the dice.
Okay, now let's leave this metaphor.
With success, a piece of content will reach all three of these audiences: a stranger who has never seen your content, someone who may be familiar with your content but wouldn't care if you disappeared, and a fan who actively seeks your content.
But they're all sharing a singular experience. They just experience it through different lenses.
Your goal as a creator is to turn a stranger into a familiar, a familiar into a fan, and a fan into even more of a fan.
There are a few tactics that can help navigate these three audiences:
?? Make your content accessible to new audiences. There's a reason HBO shows start with a 'Previously on..." montage. You need new audiences to be able to understand what the heck is happening! Before you post a piece of content, think of what fresh eyes would think. Is it too 'inside baseball'? Would a stranger understand what the heck is going on?
???? Welcome new audiences. "If you're new to the podcast, make sure to drop into our Discord and introduce yourself!" With a simple call-to-action for new audiences, you can get them ramped up into your content universe without slowing down the narrative for existing audiences.
?? Build culture within your content. How do you say 'hello'? How do you say 'goodbye'? What do you call your fans? These repeatable details provide a familiar pattern that can be more easily remembered when strangers are being introduced to your content the first few times.
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?????? Take care of your fans. Don't take your fans for granted. Give the biggest fans special content. Talk to them 1:1 through DMs. Make sure they don't feel left behind in your pursuit of more fans.
My mission for you: before you hit 'post' on your next piece of content, think about how it will be experienced by a stranger, a familiar, and a fan.
Will strangers know what's going on? Will familiars continue to get the content that made them stick around after the first time? And will fans feel like you're evolving in the right way?
If not, that's okay! Not every piece of content needs to be perfect for every audience. But your content feed as a whole should be!
That took 2 minutes. You have 8 minutes left. Go remix your social media to grow 1% right now!
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About the Author
Phil Ranta, is a 2021 LinkedIn Top Voice in Innovation & Tech and has been creating content for the internet and building internet businesses professionally for nearly 20 years, starting on MySpace and riding trends to the present. He was the Head of Gaming Creators, North America at Facebook, the first network lead at Fullscreen, the COO at Studio71, and spent 10 years as a working comedian (including 2 years on cruise ships). He's a husband, a dad of two littles, and an insufferable digital media wonk.
Chief Revenue Officer | High Scale (Performance Ad Agency)
7 个月Nailing it with content for every level of your audience is key—strangers to followers, followers to fans, and keeping fans hooked. It’s all about evolving your engagement at every step Phil.
Creator Economy Sherpa | Award Winning Curator, Moderator & Speaker | "Inside the Creator Economy" Newsletter | Board of Director | Geek
7 个月As a fan of high fantasy, this is a very relatable way to think about your audience segments. What I would do in that situation is say "hi guys, drinks on me", drop down a piece of red elf gold on the bar and say the barkeep: "a bottle of your finest Dorwinian for me and my mates"
Educator | Instructional Designer | Writer | AI Mad Scientist
7 个月This is great Phil Ranta. I've looked at this from the Educator lens of Learner Profiles but this is a great way to reimagine the readers with a D&D lens!