Today I’m going to discuss my 4 top tips on how to connect with your audience!  Learning how to connect with your audience is more important than ever in our highly saturated digital age but at the end of this video you’ll have the tools you need to make it happen!

The 4 most effective ways to connect with your community are 

1. Speak to your Target audience
2. Use Social Media
3. Tell Stories
4. Videos

Now Before you take off running like Forrest Gump, let’s talk about why each of these forms of communication are so  valuable and how they will help you get ahead in your industry.

How to Connect With Your Audience

1. Target Audience 

This is the most important foundation you need in order to  build your business.  You need to be able to identify exactly who your Ideal customer avatar is {Your ICA}. 

Once you know exactly who you are talking to it relieves some of the pressure on yourself because it’s not about you.  Your product or service is needed by someone and that is how you start creating your content.

I know you are thinking “but my product can help anyone” – I get it.  But realistically if you are trying to talk to a wide spectrum of people you end up talking to no one.  Once you stop speaking to everyone and start speaking to your dream client THEN you will start to appeal to everyone.

When you are creating content to engage with your community ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. What do they need to hear today?
2. How can I help inspire, educate, or entertain them?
3. What are they emotionally going through at the moment? Set the tone of the content.

Many mentors and coaches will want you to know every single detail of your ICA.  They even want you to name your dream client.  But here is what you REALLY need to focus on – 

-What is their fear in relation to your product/service

-What stresses them out

-What keeps them up at night

– What is their dream solution

– What would they pay anything for to achieve their dream solution

– Would they become more influential if their dream solution came true?

Chances are you know the emotions that play along with these questions because you were more than likely in this position yourself at some point.

After you identify these important factors – ask yourself how your product/service fits in and how you can help your ICA.

Some other great questions to answer when determining your ICA is 

-age/gender

-marital status/children

-what do they value

-what books, speakers, and authors do they like

-where do they live

-what is their occupation

Once your Ideal customer is identified how do you make it easy for them to find you?  This leads us to the 2nd best way to communicate with your audience – Social Media

2. Use Social Media to Connect With Your Audience

Social Media is THE most effective way to garner incredible relationships with your community.  And you start with creating posts + content that speak directly to your dream customer.  In these posts you want to teach, inspire and entertain while showing an more in depth behind the scenes look at your business.

And since you have already figured out exactly who you are speaking to then your content will be very valuable and authentic.

Social Media is NOT where we sell.  It’s a place to build trust and real relationships while you connect with your audience.  Social media helps by humanizing your brand as you can show more of yourself, your team, and your customers testimonials.  All of this will build trust and trust will bring in sales.  

We are in a new marketing era where social media has made it so that a brand can no longer talk just about the products and services, it is now a part of the brand’s job to create and foster valuable connections with their customers.

It’s impossible to be on ALL the social media channels – pick just 1 or 2 platforms where you know your ideal customer likes to hang out. 

Moving on to….

3. Storytelling

Before social media came along, the standard practice for communicating with customers was to list the benefits and features of your product- and why it was a good idea to buy it.

But NOW you have to be able to relate to your community in a more emotional, and honest way.  Facts and features don’t create meaningful relationships, however storytelling that draws at the heart strings and creates massive impact on consumers.

Would you believe me if I told you there was actually science behind this??

Studies have shown that when we are told stories our brains produce hormones that make us feel all the emotions: dopamine, cortisol, endorphins and oxytocin.  It’s like an emotional high.

Why should we care about this?  Because it’s our emotions that cause action.  We make emotional decisions to purchase and AFTERWARDS we rationalize it with logic.

One of the strongest drives in storytelling is vulnerability – it keeps things real and brings humanity to the story by making it relatable.  While vulnerability can be great don’t be afraid to draw lines in the sand on just how much you choose to share in your brand story.

Storytelling is a great way to connect with your audience on a more emotional and vulnerable level.

You are probably sitting there thinking – I have no idea how to write a story, let alone many stories.

Sure you do! And here’s how!

The most important thing to remember is that you are NOT the main character in your brand story.  You are the sidekick.  The hero of your story is your ideal customer.  

With this in mind let’s break down a simple story structure:

1. Who are your characters and what do they want? 
2. What obstacle is in their way? And how can your product/service help?
3. What was the outcome? What benefits will they or did they receive from your product/service?

As time goes on you can start collecting stories that are more detailed and have more flare that relate to your product or service.  

And finally – 

4. Video

Video is the easiest form of connecting with your audience. While many brands are TERRIFIED of video, rest assured we are living in a world where authenticity dominates creative beauty.  

What I mean is – consumers want to see the real real, the highs and lows, the messy store rooms, lessons learned from failures, imperfect no makeup, my life is a mess but I’m showing up anyways to support you, kind of real.  

When you start to use more video your customers automatically start creating a relationship by seeing and hearing you.  It creates an instant emotional connection and builds the trust.

Video stimulates more senses making it more memorable than any other medium.  In the digital age you WANT TO STAND OUT AND BE MEMORABLE.

Let’s go over some fascinating stats that most people don’t think of when they consider doing video content:

-viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to just 10% when they read it in a text

-our brains process imagery 60,000 times faster than text

-64%users are more likely to buy from video marketing

-Video humanizes your brand

-video posts on social media receive 2x as much engagement compared to other posts

-45% consumers want to see more LIVE videos on social media

-video marketers get 66% more leads a year

-marketers that use video grew their revenue 49% faster than non video users.

If that  isn’t enough to convince you to start capitalizing on videos let me leave you one last note.  All content is making a shift to become video, and all the social media platforms are pushing for it.  Start doing videos to help your business NOW and get ahead of others in your industry.

And that’s how you can connect with your audience-  Now get out there and have fun!

Be sure to check out my article on why SMALL BUSINESSES HOLD THE ADVANTAGE ON SOCIAL MEDIA!

Do you have any questions I didn’t answer in this post about how to connect with your audience that I didn’t answer in this post? Let me know in a comment below!