What It Means To Own Your Audience

If you rely on the Internet, and social media in particular, to build your brand and make money, you've probably heard about the need to own your audience. This phrase has been around for a long time, but thanks to TikTok's uncertain future, more and more people are parroting the sentiment behind it. 

This is something we've talked about for as long as we've been posting content. Though how you do this evolves over the time, the core concepts behind it remind the same. 

So let's look at what it means to own your audience, why you should, and how you might go about it.

What It Means To Own Your Audience

The notion of owning your audience isn't as possessive or defensive as it sounds. It's not like you're trying to keep the people who pay attention to you and buy from you from paying attention to or buying from other people. 

What it really means is that you are in control of your ability to reach out to them. And what's more, they're in control of their ability to reach out to you. That's right — "owning your audience" is a two-way street. It means that:

• You know the fundamentals about who they are, like their name
• You know how they prefer to be contacted
• You know what they like to see/get from you, either based on what they've bought from you in the past or because they tell you
• They know what to expect from your content or products (not that you're always doing the "same" thing, but that they can trust you to continue creating and communicating)
• They know how to get in touch with you via appropriate means

Ultimately, we're talking about data. Owning your audience really means you own the information about the most important interactions between them and you. 

Why You Should Want To Own Your Audience

Being able to directly reach your audience means you're able to foster better direct relationships with them. (But be careful, because it also means you can spam them, which is a terrible idea and the best way to hurt good relationships). If you're constantly relying on social media platforms and other social distribution channels to reach your audience, you're likely not reaching people who really do want to hear from you.

And therein lies the rub with how most of us build audiences nowadays. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are all incredible ways reach new people. But they're not particularly good — or at least not reliable — ways to stay in touch with the people who want to keep hearing from you. 

Only a small fraction of people who indicate they want to be in your active audience actually see the content you post on these platforms on a regular basis. Furthermore, these platforms change how they distribute content fairly frequently, meaning not only are you not guaranteed to foster your existing audience, you're not even guaranteed to continue getting in front of a new audience, even if your content remains top-tier. 

Sure, some of these platforms provide decent to even great analytics about how your channel, content, and community are reacting. But remember — you still don't own this data. This is all just information about the interactions happening on your channel, and it's only what the platform wants to show you. Most users are anonymized. 

This is called "third-party" data. Because ultimately that data belongs to a third party — the platform in question — and they simply let you see some of it. Owning your audience means having "first-party" data: important information your audience shares directly with you and doesn't rely on the existence of another app. 

How To Begin Collecting First-Party Data

First of all, here are some examples of what constitutes first-party data:

• A person's actual name
• Email addresses (though yes, technically these still rely on third-party platforms)
• Phone numbers
• Identity characteristics like gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, nationality etc.
• Addresses
• Survey responses
• Purchase history

There are also some kind of "in-between" pieces of data about your audience that, while not quite as reliable as the other information, are still more valuable than the data you may get from a third-party platform. These include things like messenger user handles in platforms like Discord, gamer handles, general employment info etc. 

It's important to note that we're not suggesting you collect all of this information on your audience. We're not saying you need to harvest as much data as you possibly can, especially if it doesn't feel relevant to what you ultimately do. Often times you'll also find that your style or brand attracts a lot of people from similar communities. 

But if they want to share it with you, it's nice to have. And it's important for you to be able to safely collect this information outside of any particular platform. This is the kind of information that helps you better serve and reach your audience. Like, you know, if one of the biggest social media platforms in the country disappears. 

Direct Sales Are Key

You might notice that a lot of this information can be collected in something as simple as a sale. This is one of the reason supporting your favorite artists by directly buying from them is so important. Not only do they control more of the price margins, but they also are able to get important info that helps them make future decisions.

You may not realize it, but even just buying a t-shirt directly from an artist's merch store helps them determine everything from what to offer fans to where to play shows and more. (This is why most stores now require addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers). It's crazy to think, but many artists don't even know if you bought a ticket to their show or not. That's because ticketing platforms and venues will often collect that data for themselves and not share it with the artist (even though the ticketing platform isn't the service the fan is paying for). 

So if you're able to, creating a store on a platform like Shopify or SquareSpace can help you start to gather this critical information from your fans most willing to support you financially. 

Never Underestimate The Power Of Asking Nicely

While getting a good chunk of information up-front is always preferable for most parties, sometimes you're just not set up for that. But you should still be prepared to collect emails or phone numbers when possible. Just about all of the major email platforms allow you to make a landing page to capture this info at the very least. Many "link in bio" companies also allow you to do this.

Sometimes, all you need to do is ask nicely. Post about it several times, including in your stories, and hope to grab a few people that way. It's always good to have an easy place to capture this info on your website as well. 

Some people are down to give you everything, and some people just want to stick to an email. That's totally cool — you want the info people want to give you, and you want to let them know what they can expect from you in exchange for it, whether it's updates, exclusives, discounts, etc. 

Your Audience Isn't Dumb

If you plan on using a service to capture phone numbers and communicate via text, that's cool — but be careful how you phrase it. For a moment there, a lot of people would say things like "text me at my phone number" and then provide what amounts to a text sign-up list. Don't pretend you're actually giving out your phone number (for multiple reasons) and don't try to trick people into giving you their data. 

Ultimately, it should be symbiotic and up to your audience. Some people prefer to get information some ways. You won't get everything from everyone, and you need to respect what people choose to give you. By the same token, asking them for it is a great place to start — as well as providing value.