The one thing I know about successful producing — and by that, I mean publishing in any media — is that the only expertise you really, really need is to know how to energize an audience enough that they want to follow you.
Beyond that, it’s all details. If you can bring the audience, someone else can manage the venue or handle the manufacturing and distribution. It’s what other people do, how they make their crust by facilitating the productions of others.
Your job is to bring an audience. If you can bring an audience, all your other problems can get solved. venues, media, all just want someone to bring them an audience.
The way you bring an audience is to know the audience better than they know themselves. You need to be expert enough to give them what comforts them, what thrills them, what delights them. That’s all an audience ever wants. That’s entertainment.
Everybody in this media savvy age wants the audience because they know that’s how to build a franchise. In this media saturated age, though, people have less time and focus, have many more options in allocating their scarce resources.
Everything may be an offer, but not every offer is compelling to people.
I initially liked the quote from Kat Koppett as she identifies that she was seen as too smart because she doesn’t trust her impulses, certainly a challenge for me.
What really resonated, though, is how she used those smarts to become an expert. Her expertise wasn’t though, in some arbitrary area, rather she became an expert in what her audience — her clients — wanted from her. She knew if she could satisfy her audience, she could expand her audience, and the only way to do that was to be “really rigorous in how [she used]this in a way that is of value, that offers what [she said she was] offering.”
Kat became an expert in energizing her audience by knowing them better than they knew themselves. She could lead them to places that they delighted in going because they found what they didn’t even know they needed or wanted before she showed it to them. She respected her audience by understanding them and making an offer of exciting, quality content that left them wanting more, content so good it created buzz by word of mouth.
The one thing I know about successful producing — and by that, I mean publishing in any media — is that the only expertise you really, really need is to know how to energize an audience enough that they want to follow you. And way that you do that is to be expert enough to give your audiences what comforts them, what thrills them, what delights them. That’s all an audience ever wants. That’s entertainment.
To be successful, you can’t just put out something that they have to figure out how to engage, how to apply in their lives. You need to give an audience something that energizes them, be an expert in meeting them where they are and taking them someplace they find value in going.
Now, this isn’t a skill that I am particularly good at. It’s why I have never tried to drive traffic to this blog, for example, because I didn’t want my self expression to be limited by the requirement of satisfying and expanding an audience. I tend to be way too strong with an audience, asking them to meet me where I am rather than meeting them where they are.
Successful producers know how to energize an audience enough that they want to come back and want to tell their friends. And they do that by being expert in what that audience wants and needs, what energizes them and what delights them.
And that’s the one thing I know about successful producers.
Callan 