11: Building Audiences through Engagement
- Page ID
- 231620
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Define audience building
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Recognize the ways legacy media outlets historically worked as gatekeepers of content for mass audiences
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Determine how digital media producers must work to build audiences through networked engagement
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Examine strategies for audience building, including using demographics and psycho-graphics, audience analytics, and content strategies
This chapter covers audience building through engagement, a broad term that encompasses everything from the most basic feedback form in an app or on a website to the practice of using social media to connect with audience members on a regular, personal basis to the point that members of the audience contribute substantially to a media product. What unifies all types of audience engagement is the idea that media professionals are working to relate directly with audience members, usually in networked communication spaces.
The ability to develop audiences and engage with them is essential for the survival of the mass media. In an age of information overload, or "information glut," the major challenge facing professional media creators, especially media writers, is to balance their efforts to produce professional content with their need to make it stand out among massive amounts of free content generated constantly by anyone with a smartphone and a story to sell.
This chapter defines what it means to build an audience and explains why it is essential for the survival of the industry that all media writers have a sense of how audiences are developed in digitally networked spaces. It also covers the interplay between legacy media platforms, which enjoy a large but often dwindling pre-existing audience, and social media platforms where much of what consumers see is based on algorithmic choices made by tech companies and creators' ability to attract attention.
Finally, this chapter covers some essential strategies for targeting audiences and reaching them with content that is in line with their interests while still serving the mission of the professional media organization.
The term "information glut" refers to the overabundance of information available to media consumers on a constant basis on social media and other digital platforms. It has a negative connotation because it suggests effort is required to sort through useless information to find what media consumers actually need or desire.
In a world of free-flowing information, where there are few if any barriers to publishing massive amounts of content online, the sheer amount of content and the lack of organization can be mind boggling for consumers. Few if any of us experience information scarcity in these times, however, many experience a scarcity of quality information and a scarcity of attention.
Much of the value media writers create for consumers in the foreseeable future will involve not just creating great content but sifting through free or cheap content created by influencers, bots of unknown origin, and AI to find what is accurate, useful, and desirable for consumers whose attention is always in demand.
This chapter addresses how to build audiences around original, high quality content and how media writers might practice careful curation as part of their work.