EP 211: Building An Audience With Tara McMullin
b'A year ago this week, I deleted about 12,000 people off my email list.\\n\\n\\n\\nThat meant that my audience shrank by about 80% with the push of a button.\\n\\n\\n\\nGDPR was going into effect and, while I wasn\\u2019t caught up in the mass hysteria happening in the digital marketing world around compliance, I did look at the regulations as an opportunity to take a new approach to building an audience for my brand.\\n\\n\\n\\nQuick aside\\u2014pro tip: never get caught up in any mass hysteria, especially when it\\u2019s about digital marketing.\\n\\n\\n\\nThe me of 2018 felt pretty calm and collected about the whole thing\\u2014but the me of 2016 or 2017 would have lost my marbles.\\n\\n\\n\\nThat email list\\u2014and the number attached to it\\u2014represented all of the work that I had put into writing, speaking, teaching, and positioning my business over nearly 10 years. But there was a problem\\u2026\\n\\n\\n\\nI had become more attached to the number than the people on that list.\\n\\n\\n\\nAnd that number was holding me back.\\n\\n\\n\\nI viewed every marketing, branding, sales, or product development decision through the lens of that number.\\n\\n\\n\\nI would experiment with messages, angles, and stories to see what would happen to that number\\u2014and all of the smaller numbers it would spit out, like click thru rate, open rate, or unsubscribes.\\n\\n\\n\\nIt wasn\\u2019t that I didn\\u2019t care about the people reading\\u2014I cared about them deeply. It\\u2019s just so easy to forget that numbers are people\\u2026 and that sometimes the people I care about most just aren\\u2019t represented by the big number but by one that\\u2019s much smaller and harder to discern.\\n\\n\\n\\nWhen I made the decision to all but start over with my email list, it was a decision to do the work to find that number, rediscover the right people, and rebuild my audience from there.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis month, we\\u2019re tackling a topic that tends to be top of mind for most small business owners: building your audience.\\n\\n\\n\\nWhether your business is the kind that thrives with an audience of 10 or whether you\\u2019re aiming to reach millions, we\\u2019ll be exploring what works for a variety of entrepreneurs as they work to attract the right people and earn attention for their brands.\\n\\n\\n\\nNow, I\\u2019ve been building an audience online for over 10 years but my perspective has recently made a big shift.\\n\\n\\n\\nTo kick off this month\\u2019s theme, I decided to share what\\u2019s working for me as we build an audience around honesty and transparency in small business\\u2014including my own.\\n\\n\\n\\nThe first thing that\\u2019s changed is who I show up as.\\n\\n\\n\\nWhen my company made a big shift 2.5 years ago to focus on The What Works Network, I declared that I was no longer the teacher or coach. My products weren\\u2019t going to revolve around how much I knew and how much of that I could teach you.\\n\\n\\n\\nI simply recognized that I didn\\u2019t have all the answers\\u2014and I wanted to turn my focus to gathering a group of people to build collective knowledge.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis represented a huge change in our business model\\u2014and I knew that.\\n\\n\\n\\nWhat I didn\\u2019t realize at the time was how much that was going to change the way I approach audience-building, too.'