Are You Building an Audience or Building Relationships?

I will admit something:

I never used to think about my audience.

I thought about them in a very transactional way. Will they like this idea? Will it be popular? But mostly, I thought of what I would be receiving from them. And it left me feeling unfulfilled.

There is a lot of emphasis on the audience these days. It's important to build an audience for your work and leverage that audience for your career. But this too can feel transactional. Because we aren't starting from the right place:

Inwards.

THE AUDIENCE OF YOU

There are lessons that we all wished to learn growing up or ones that we are learning in the moment. Those lessons are what we pass on to the receivers of our work.

This is where we build our audience.

Art is the first instruction manual for understanding life. The paintings found in caves and structures built in ancient Africa communicated ways of knowing to the people who came across them. Their art left lessons on how to navigate the world around them that we are still able to receive.

I've heard the phrase:

I create for myself. Everyone else is just invited.

This sounds self-serving, but it's also the essence of how art can resonate. We are individuals, but also part of a collective. The key to building an audience is first, trying to understand something yourself. And then going through the process of figuring out who else needs to learn the same lesson.

Teach yourself first. Then begin to share the knowledge with anyone who wants to learn.

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AUDIENCE

The Blended Future Project began as a blog writing about my personal experiences of being mixed in a society that wants to put you inside of a box. While it may not have reached tens of thousands of followers, it has reached a very passionate group of people, many of whom I've met personally and call my friends.

This would not have been possible had I not decided to share and teach.

Building an audience for a film can begin exactly the same way. The themes that you are addressing through the journey of your characters are lessons that you are learning and giving. Once you have a script ready, ask yourself a few questions:

What is the main message of the film?

Why is this message important to me?

Who else would like to hear this message?

And then begin the process of sharing it and seeing who resonates with it.

BUILDING A SUPPORTIVE NETWORK

Most of you reading this don't have large marketing teams and PR firms behind you. So you must be your own advocate for your work and spread the message. But we can get caught up trying to spread the message wide instead of deep. We look at metrics like followers and engagement, instead of the real metric:

Conversations.

The industry standard for a strong click-through rate is 0.5 to 1 percent. To put that in perspective:

For every 1000 followers, 10 will actually engage with a link about your work.

Out of those 10 people, if 3 actually take a secondary action (buy the movie, sign up for the newsletter) you are doing well. So while having a large audience is very beneficial, so is building a relationship with the people who have come into your orbit.

So here is something that I'm recommending (and will start doing myself):

Let's start engaging in more conversations with the people connected to us.

Social media has completely forgotten the social part. We focus on our content buckets and showing up consistently for the people who could, perhaps, maybe, possibly, click follow on our account. We play the game of building up a high follower count. It's a game that, if you reach a certain level, can have a tremendous benefit.

But a game that has you focused on the numbers and not on the people.

While you are trying to figure out what content will get you in front of a lot of followers, you can spend the same amount of time simply building a relationship with someone you already know. Send a message introducing yourself, ask how they are doing and if you can help with something.

Just being human and in community is what actually helps.

You never know who you are speaking with and who else is in their sphere of influence. Simply connecting with them can connect you to someone else. And they will be the people who will actually champion your work in front of someone else.

I use social media to build awareness, but then build connection to actually create impact. When I directed my short film Breakaway, I used social media to build awareness around the project. That caught the interest of Chris Hall, who became the DP, as he didn't know this side of me existed while we worked together briefly (another reason to speak up and engage in conversation). We began a relationship that has led us to now making Concrete River, a feature film that I am both excited and nervous to create.

But none of this would be possible without building a connection.

A NEW MINDSET

We are conditioned to live in scarcity. We continually pursue the avenue to more in order to build an audience. But the numbers themselves are meaningless. We will not go to our graves remembering the amount of Instagram followers we have.

We will remember the stories coming from that.

The stranger who became a friend, and the friend who became a partner. The experiences that you shared together and the memories you created. That is what we will remember.

Art and commerce are inextricably linked and we need an audience in order to keep our careers going as filmmakers. But in order to build those large audiences to come view our work, we need small, meaningful ones. And we are in a time where it is easier than ever to build them.

While you play the game everyone else needs to play, don't forget to add the one very few are:

Create deep relationships of one. Repeat the process, build and watch your impact grow.

So take a look at your followers, however many you may have. Identify 1 or 2 that you would really like to start a conversation with, send them a message and enjoy the adventure that begins.