[00:02] want to talk about growing your audience and specifically some of the biggest mistakes that I see people make that stopped their audience from growing. So, back in the day, the first online course that I ever bought was about how to grow
[00:17] your email list. That was followed by buying another online course about how to sell with webinars. And then another online course about how to use Pinterest to get traffic for your website. And on their face, all of these courses were
[00:32] about different things, different topics, different strategies. But, if you kind of look behind the scenes, if you look under the hood, or if you heard with any of them, the marketing messages that convinced me to buy them, honestly,
[00:46] they were all kind of the same. The marketing messages for all of them were, "Grow your audience, and if you have an audience, then you have a lot of opportunities. If you have an audience, then it's easy to make money online."
[00:59] then it's easy to make money online." And that made a lot of sense. Now, those courses, some of them turned out to be better than others. Some of them turned out to be more helpful to me than others. But, that message is still true
[01:14] to this day. Growing your audience is perhaps one of the smartest things that you can do if you want to build a business, if you want to be able to work make money online, if you want opportunities like a publishing deal, or
[01:29] the opportunity to speak on stages, or even maybe to become a politician. You know, whatever sort of opportunity you want, most of the time growing your audience can help you get there faster and more easily. And obviously, I say
[01:44] this from a first-hand experience, right? I've grown my audience over these past seven or eight years, and it has changed my life more than any other single business move that I've ever made by a long shot. Now, maybe you're like,
[02:00] "Gillian, you're preaching to the choir. I totally know that. I'm working on it. Not going so well, but I'm working on that." Well, that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about how to get this to start working for you.
[02:12] Specifically, five of the biggest mistakes that I see people make that hold them back from growing their audience. And what is this based on? Well, basically, for these last seven or eight years, since about
[02:25] eight years, since about 2018 or late 2017, I've been working 2018 or late 2017, I've been working with people online, either as peers or as a coach, to help them build online businesses. And a big part of that has
[02:38] been growing their audiences. And some of my clients, some of my peers, have been able to grow their audiences, and some have struggled for a while. And after all this time, I've noticed a lot of patterns about what leads to
[02:54] successful audience growth and what keeps people struggling. So, let's get on into it. The very first thing that I think holds more people back than think holds more people back than anything else is poor packaging, okay?
[03:07] Whenever you are trying to grow your audience, you're going to be putting some sort of content out into the world. Maybe that's YouTube videos, podcast Maybe that's YouTube videos, podcast episodes, Instagram posts, Facebook ads,
[03:20] but some type of content. And the appearance of that content matters more than just about anything else. And this is true today more than ever before, because there is just so much content online. And the fact of the matter is
[03:34] that people do judge books by their covers, right? You look at a book on a bookshelf, maybe at a bookstore, maybe you just see it on Amazon, but a big part of your decision to read this book or not read this book is what the cover
[03:46] about like the design of the front cover, I'm talking about also the title of the book. I'm talking about what it says on the back about the book, right? something that you might not realize is that the packaging goes a lot deeper
[04:01] than that. It's not just the outer wrapping of the content that we're talking about here, but we're also talking about the appearance of, if you the case of a written article, for example, this has to do with how the
[04:17] content is actually formatted on the page. Is it broken up into nice-sized paragraphs? Is it in a font and a color that is easy to read and looks professional? And of course, a blog post would be the very simplest sort of
[04:32] example we could look at. Because when it comes to, say, video, now there are a lot more parts that will be judged visually on their packaging. We've got yourself and even what you choose to wear. Of course, the quality of your
[04:48] video footage. There are so many different aspects of the appearance of your content. And like it or not, people do judge books by their cover. Like I when there's so much content to choose from, people have to make these snap
[05:02] judgments about what they will pay attention to, what they will choose to watch, what they will choose to listen to, what they will choose to read. So, if your audience is not growing, the first and most likely reason, the most
[05:16] common reason, is that maybe it's not packaged well enough. You could have an amazing message, but if the packaging is poor, if it doesn't look good, if it doesn't look professional or quality enough, then people will not pay
[05:31] not grow. Now, while that is the most common reason, it certainly is not everybody's problem. Some people have amazing presentation, they have amazing packaging on their content, but their audience still isn't growing. So, let's
[05:44] talk about the second reason why that might be, and that is inconsistent might be, and that is inconsistent output, okay? Inconsistent output means that you are making content, but you're not making it consistently, or the
[05:58] content itself is not consistent. So, this could mean that you are posting, but not on a consistent, predictable schedule. This could mean that you are posting on consistent, predictable schedule, but every video you post is on
[06:12] a different topic. It could even be that you are posting on a consistent schedule, consistent topic, but the style of your videos is just all over Any of these different types of inconsistency is going to lead to a
[06:26] similar problem, which is basically that somebody might stumble across one of your pieces of content and enjoy it, but when they go and they look at your account, or they go and they look at your website, they don't see a
[06:40] consistent message. They don't see that they are going to be getting a consistent product from you, essentially. When I say product here, I you're trying to use to grow your audience. People want consistency. They
[06:54] want to know what to expect. And if you are here, there, and the other place, subscribe, they're not going to choose to follow. Or an even simpler version of
[07:06] this is just that if you are making content on a variety of different topics, then while one piece of your content might appeal to them, when they go and check out your account, or your channel, or whatnot, they see that a lot
[07:20] actually appeal to them. They're not actually interested in it. I know that this happens to me all the time. I'll stumble across a video on YouTube, or you know, maybe it's suggested by the helpful YouTube algorithm, and I'll
[07:33] really enjoy it. So, I'll go and check out the channel that created that video, hoping that maybe I've found a new channel that I can enjoy a lot more videos from. But then, I discover that that channel is actually on a topic that
[07:48] I have very little interest in, or most of their videos are on random other topics that I'm not interested in. And the video that I enjoyed was unique. It was different. And of course, in that case, I don't choose to subscribe. So,
[08:03] that's mistake number two, inconsistent output. Now, the third mistake definitely can be related, but it's kind of its own unique thing. And that is that you're doing too much. That might be the reason that your audience is not
[08:17] growing. Honestly, it might be because you're making too much content. Now, let me explain. So, there's two different versions of this one. One version is that you are making so much content that each piece of content that you make
[08:32] isn't good enough quality. And so, this ends up causing the first problem we Although, sometimes it's not even just the packaging that gets affected, but the actual content itself, the substance of the content. And by that, I mean that
[08:48] if you are churning out so much content, you might not have enough good ideas to really make quality content about. So, it might just be that your content is rushed and not produced well, or it might be that it's lacking substance.
[09:02] Okay, but the second way that you might be doing too much and that this might be holding you back is if you are on too many different platforms. You're trying to grow your audience on Instagram and here on YouTube and over on X, maybe on
[09:17] LinkedIn as well. Maybe you're also trying to use Facebook ads or Google ads different marketing strategies and your tactic is like throw everything at it. You know, if I try all these things, then my success is inevitable. But maybe
[09:32] that it's in the essentialism book. Let me grab that real quick. So, we've got these two circles here, and if you do a million things, then you don't get very far with any of them. But, if you put all your energy into one thing, then you
[09:46] can just make so much more progress with that thing to where you actually get significant results. And this is really the problem that I see so many people running into with growing their audience is that they're trying to do all these
[10:00] different things, and so they're not really getting any sort of momentum with any of them. Their audience never really starts growing on any of these platforms, and they don't ever get to a snowball effect. So, that's mistake
[10:12] number three that might be holding you back is just that you're doing too much. The next mistake I want to talk about, honestly, is a less common one, but I still want to call it out because it is a real one that definitely holds some
[10:25] people back. And that is that your content is too vague. Some people, I've seen this on YouTube channels, I've seen this on blogs, I've certainly seen this on podcasts. Some people, they talk about these kind of big picture,
[10:39] about these kind of big picture, general, not very specific topics that are hard for people to really understand why they are important, why they really matter, and they're kind of disconnected from real life. Now, I'm going to
[10:53] apologize here that this point actually is a little bit of a meta example concrete examples of what I'm talking about. The best one I can come up with sometimes is general sort of success content or life coaching type content.
[11:11] Sometimes it is about just kind of like how to improve yourself, that type of self-improvement content that is very specific, very tactical, um and there is also a time and a place for talking
[11:24] about the theoretical or some of those big picture things. But, I see some people consistently put out the sort of vague, general, not very specific type of content, but it just doesn't have a very strong appeal to anybody, even to
[11:37] get them necessarily to click on it. But, if they do click on it and they long and they often don't choose to subscribe. So, while it's hard for me to exactly define this because it is vague, my advice to you here would be that make
[11:52] sure that you are making your content about specific, real things and that you are really making it connect with real examples to real challenges that people are facing, real experiences that people are going through. Use specific,
[12:08] real-life examples in your content as much as possible. Okay, and then the final mistake that I want to talk about today is unpopular topics. This is a pretty common one. You need to make sure that you are talking about topics that
[12:22] are popular enough, that there are enough people who are interested in them. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go for the most popular topics. And I see that a mistake that some people make here is that in the
[12:35] interest of going for popular topics, they go very broad, they go very general. Now, we're starting to get into that territory of the mistake we're talking about previously where your content starts to become vague. So, make
[12:47] sure that you are talking about something specific, but something that is fairly popular. I would say, make sure that you're talking about something that there are at least thousands of people in the world that are interested
[13:00] in that specific thing. Now, of course, a great and pretty obvious way to do this is by doing keyword research. You There are various different keyword research tools you can use to find out what people are searching for here on
[13:13] YouTube or over on Google or any other search platform. These days, you can also, of course, use some AI tools as well, but that's not the only way. You well, but that's not the only way. You also can use your own common sense,
[13:26] right? And your own experience. Maybe you are involved in a community or some sort of group online where you see a lot of people interested in these topics say that you need to talk about popular topics, that does not mean that every
[13:40] single piece of content that you make needs to be about something that is already popular. As long as the overall topic that you are talking about is popular and you are regularly making content on specific things that are
[13:53] popular, you can certainly get away with also making some content about some specific things that aren't very popular, at least not yet, but things that you think are important, things that you think should be popular. Okay,
[14:06] so those are the five most common mistakes that I see people make. I've certainly made plenty of them myself as well that really hold you back from growing your audience. I know for me some of the biggest ones were doing too
[14:19] much. Initially, when I first started trying to grow my audience, I was on all grow my audience everywhere, and my audience never really started growing audience never really started growing until I decided to only do YouTube for
[14:32] at least 3 months. Now, this ended up working so well that I stuck with it for a few years, only doing YouTube, and then eventually branched out a little bit onto some other platforms. Specifically, I started working on
[14:45] really growing my email list, but that's a little bit downstream, of course, right? We need some way that we get that initial exposure, we get that visibility, and then those people can become email subscribers. But growing
[14:58] your email list isn't exactly a way to grow your audience in and of itself. Now, if you really see the value of growing your audience, and this is one of your top business priorities, and you see that this could really open up all
[15:10] of the other doors for you in terms of growing your business, growing your income, etc., then I have a little invitation for you. This year, I have just realized that one of the biggest things, the biggest challenges that my
[15:23] clients face, the biggest thing that they need to do to get their business to grow, is grow their audience. And so, I'm starting a new program called Build Your Audience Bootcamp. It's going to be a 6-month program where we just double
[15:36] every step of the way for making those initial decisions about what platform you should be on, what topics you should talk about, what type of content you should create, all of that, through actually creating the content and being
[15:49] strategic on your platform of choice. And we're also going to use some extracurricular type of strategies that will work on any platform where we can use collaborations to grow our audiences together faster. And we are then
[16:04] ultimately going to translate all of this into growing your email list. So, this new program, Build Your Audience Bootcamp, is starting in just a few weeks. The launch of it is right around the corner. So, if this sounds like what
[16:16] you need, then what I want you to do is go to Gillian Perkins.com/build. that wait list, and then I will send you an email as soon as we do open up enrollment for Build Your Audience Bootcamp. I am so excited about this,
[16:32] the most excited I have been about a program launch in quite some time, because I know, like I said earlier, I know first-hand the huge impact that growing an audience can have on your business and on your life, and I just
[16:45] cannot wait to help many of you get your audiences growing, get your businesses growing, get your income from your businesses growing, and it's getting started so, so soon. So again, that URL is GillianPerkins.com/build.
[17:00] I hope to see you on that list, and I hope that you decide to join us for well, that is everything for today's video. Now, next step, here's what you can do. If you want to see more videos from me in the future, you can click
[17:13] down here to subscribe to my channel. If you want something else to watch right now, check out this video right here about why I think everybody should have a YouTube channel. But, if what you really want is to grow your audience,
[17:26] then go to Gillian Perkins.com/build and get your name on the waitlist.