How To Stand Out And Build A Loyal Following in 2023

Don't get sucked into algorithm games. Instead, focus on areas where more effort brings about better results. Learn about the pyramid and the four layers you need to conquer.

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It’s Hard To Win Games Without Knowing The Rules

When people discuss building an audience, the conversation often becomes too focused on winning the game of algorithms.

The problem is the algorithm works in mysterious ways and there is a cult of people making all sorts of bizarre sacrifices to please it.

If you want to play the algorithm game, then, by all means, go ahead. But be mindful that this approach takes you down a specific journey — potentially a soul-crushing journey. The things you need to to do be featured by algorithms are often the very things that might lose you the respect of your peers.

i.e. If you want to write short, absolutist, statements on social media which you know others will agree with then, by all means, do so. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself followed by many but respected by few.

Worse yet, if you don’t know how an algorithm really works, you’re trying to win a game without knowing the rules. And even if you do manage to crack the code, the odds are so will everyone else. Once that happens, the algorithm needs to change to stop a swarm of copycat-style content which ruins the experience for everyone.

Even if you win, you might lose. There is a better approach to this.

Treat Algorithm Traffic As A Bonus

A few people have mentioned sharp declines in traffic to their blogs/newsletters due to the change in the LinkedIn algorithm.

That’s unfortunate, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. Every platform responds to an increase in popularity by limiting organic reach.

The question though is does it matter?

If you’re relying on LinkedIn to build an audience, then yes it obviously does. You now need to hunt for a new way to attract an audience. But if you’re treating any traffic you get from social as a nice bonus (which you should be) rather than your sole strategy, then it’s not a problem at all.

The question you face now is which approach will you take. Will you:

a) Try to figure out how the new algorithm works and adapt to it?

b) Develop an approach to building an audience which you can control?

I’m biased, but I’d like to propose the latter approach.

The Audience Building Pyramid

When I think about building an audience today, I imagine it as a set of steps you need to go through as shown below.

If you do every step well, you will build a strong, unique, reputation within your industry. You will create content with unique value vs. more generic opinion posts. You will put yourself in a situation where you can control the outcomes by the level of effort you’re willing to invest in them.

And this is what we mean by control. Control is when the application of more effort directly brings about better results.

The problem with algorithms is success relies too much upon luck. Greater effort doesn’t necessarily mean greater success.

If you focus on the things you can control, you can build an audience more reliably and predictably. You can control your effort in each of the layers in our pyramid above.

Let’s go through each in turn.

The Foundation Layer: Unique Skills, Knowledge, and Experiences

The foundation layer of building an audience is your skills, knowledge, and experience.

If you don’t have a unique set of skills, knowledge, or experiences which are valuable to the audience, there is no reason for anyone to follow your content. The easiest way to begin building an audience is to first increase your skillset.

I suspect people greatly estimate the value of their experience and underestimate the value of skills and knowledge. Experience is nice to have, but everyone has experience (usually experience working with a large organisation). There’s a law of diminishing returns about experience. Does having 12 years of experience make you much more informed than 10 years of experience?

• Knowledge. Knowledge is your deep knowledge of what does and doesn’t work. You can’t come across this knowledge by doing what everyone else does. Instead, you should be having a couple of calls with people in your target audience each week. Understand what they are struggling with and what hasn’t worked well for them. Do a depth of research that others don’t have the time or effort to do.

• Skills. What can you do that other consultants can’t? A few years ago, I made the decision to focus a lot of FeverBee’s efforts on becoming data-driven. That first meant completing several data courses to have a deep understanding of the intricacies of data. It’s been a game-changer for us. What is the missing skill you sense many in your industry need? Take courses in skills as this gives you abilities others don’t have.

If you don’t have unique skills and knowledge which are useful to your industry, it’s hard to do any of the other layers well.

Develop Your Unique Perspective

Your unique skills, knowledge, and experience should also equip you with a unique perspective. This unique perspective (your viewpoint) is key to building your audience. It’s what will make you stand out amongst the crowd. It’s integral to how you position yourself against other consultants in the industry.

Here’s the key thing about having an often overlooked unique perspective:

You have to be willing to highlight truths you know will be unpopular.

If you’re writing something and can’t think why anyone would disagree, then it’s simply common knowledge and doesn’t need to be written. But if you want to build an audience, you have to offer the audience a perspective they can’t get anywhere else. You have to be willing and eager to say things you know others will disagree with.

Take deliberate aim at sacred beliefs held by your industry which you know to be untrue (due to the unique skills, knowledge, and experience you’ve now acquired!). Don’t hold back. Say what needs to be said and then stand by it. Welcome the debate.

The obvious downside of this is people will disagree (perhaps even the majority of people will disagree). Sometimes they will disagree quite strongly and take a personal dislike to you. That’s to be expected.

Attracting disagreement is a good sign. It means you’ve created something which isn’t common knowledge and strikes a chord. The bigger concern is if no one expresses disagreement. Or worse, no one really reacts either way.

I’ve written plenty of things over the years which received strong criticism, yet it’s typically the things which provoked the biggest disagreement which also attracted my best clients.

Make full use of the independent part of being an independent consultant.

You can say things and highlight truths which people working for brands might not be able to. In doing so, you will discover you’re not alone and rally precisely the sort of people you want to work with to your audience.

An important point here. Always attack ideas, never attack people. Attacking people is simply mean. Attacking ideas is what drives an industry forward. Don’t get sucked into long-running disputes with people - even your dissenters. Reply once or twice and then let them have the last word if they need it.

(Aside: You will typically notice your biggest critics don’t seem to produce anything of unique value themselves.)

You should be able to explain what is your unique perspective on your industry/topic. Is it truly unique? (i.e. will a good number of people disagree with it?). If you’re only writing things you know people will agree with, you’re just another voice in the crowd.

It should go without saying, that if you try to please everyone, you’re never truly going to be able to build a loyal following. Once you become comfortable with criticism, you can start to achieve your goals.

Unique Tactics

It’s unfortunate so many people jump straight into tactics before figuring out the unique skills and perspectives they offer. This results in people creating lots of content - but later discovering none of it really resonates.

For example, if you’ve published dozens of YouTube videos and none has received 1k views - you’ve probably jumped ahead a few steps. Likewise, if you’re creating lots of content and none of it seems to catch on, you're simply not adding enough unique value. You haven’t figured out the unique perspective or developed a unique skillset yet.

Too many people copy the tactics they see others using without understanding it’s not about the tactics - it’s about the unique skills and perspective. You need these in place first.

Once you have this, you have plenty of tactics you can use to build an audience. The most common, sadly, is to publish blog posts (forgive the irony). The problem with publishing blog posts is there isn’t exactly a shortage of blog posts. There’s an endless river of blog posts gushing past us at 100 miles per hour every single day.

There’s also a law of diminishing returns about blog posts. For example, the difference between creating 10 and 20 resources is quite significant. But does publishing your 3001st post give you much more of an edge over your 3000th post?

The easiest way to build an audience today is to pursue the tactics others don’t have the time, resources, or ability to do.

There are other approaches you can consider. For example:

• Hosting events. Reach out to people and invite them to join your upcoming events - either in person or online.

• Direct relationships. Connect with two to three people each day to build relationships.

• Participating in the events of others. Become a speaker at events.

• Host your own show. Perhaps its a podcast, perhaps it’s a live experience?

• Definitive resource. Identify your sector's 3 to 5 critical topics and create the definitive content for it. Undertake deep research, publish the results, and update it every year. Make it the best place to learn.

• Training courses. Create training courses for particular topics. Use the videos to promote yourself and your work.

• Create tools. Develop and introduce interactive tools people can use to find out more about their level of success.

Each of these takes a lot more work, but they also help you stand out too.

Experiment with different tactics if you like. I can’t stress enough how useful it is to depart from the beaten track here.

Unique Effort

At the top of the pyramid is the unique, consistent, persistent, habitual, effort you’re willing to invest in your tactics over time.

If you’ve done all of the above and you’re still not finding success, the harsh reality is you’re probably not working hard enough. All things being equal, whoever works the hardest wins.

Alas, not everyone has the same ability to work hard. If you’re juggling a family, volunteering, and/or perhaps a personal illness, that reduces the time and energy you have to invest in work.

Yet very few of us work flat out with the hours we have available to us. Far too often we waste time on distractions. We start pursuing the things which are fun, easy, and immediately rewarding versus working on the big things which will have a game-changing impact.

Social media is a classic example. It always feels like you’re achieving something by promoting yourself on social media. But can you remember a single tweet or post any of your peers made last year? Do you think people who are looking to procure your services will do so on the basis of the tweets you’re making or because of the events you’ve spoken at, books you’ve published, or courses you’ve created?

Another example is engaging in small group activities. There are countless webinars, group chats, and podcast invitations which attract less than a few dozen people but can consume hours of your time. I’d suggest cutting down on this area.

My suggestion is to take one of your biggest goals and break it down into a series of steps where you can invest more effort over time. Block out the first hour of your day to focus on your unique tactics. This might include

• Researching relevant examples for 30 to 60 minutes each day.

• Making direct personal connections with 5 to 6 people each day via LinkedIn or other channels.

• Writing or designing for 30 to 60 minutes per day.

• Writing to one organisation per day with a problem they’re facing you can help solve.

• Providing detailed answers to questions in relevant communities

• etc…

You get the idea. If you do any one of these (or more than one of these) consistently for over a year, you will experience great results. However, if you dabble in one thing and then another - or become distracted by every new opportunity which comes along, you will be in the same place next year as this year.

Find the 1 to 3 habits you can consistently leverage over time. These should be directly related to executing your unique tactics.

Anytime an opportunity arises, honestly evaluate if it’s part of your strategy or not. 90% of the time it isn’t, so turn it down.

Aside: I wrote in-depth about habits here.

It’s Not Easy

When people struggle to build much of a following after years of trying, you can usually diagnose the layer on the pyramid where they slipped up. Sometimes it’s the very first layer. Other times it’s a failure on every single layer.

People will only follow you if you offer them something incredibly unique that they can’t get anywhere else. This begins with having a unique set of skills, knowledge and expertise. Then you need to use that knowledge to develop a unique perspective. You have to be willing to say the things you know to be true but will be unpopular.

Then you have to figure out the best mediums and tactics to use to convey your message. Try novel approaches here. Finally, you have to put in the effort to do them incredibly well.

Good luck.