Fantastic!

Audience building, content marketing, content strategy…

These are hot buzz words. And a lot of people are critical of these ideas. Maybe you’re one of them. I know I was.

In fact, for a long time my approach to content marketing was to write an article, publish it, and tweet about it. Then move on. The problem with that is it puts all the value on the *now* and it puts us into the false mindset that if something’s not new then it’s not valuable.

It was in 2011 that I quit my job to blog for a living. And after years of being a self-employed, work-from-home writer and publisher, I feel like I’ve got a small understanding on how to build trust with you, my readers.

There are two approaches to things like audience building, content marketing, and content strategy:

1. **The used-car-salesman approach:** This is the guy who is pushing his crappy crap onto us. He doesn’t care about what we want or need. He’s just trying to make a quick buck and then move on to the next sucker.

2. **The value-based approach:** This is the girl who is doing something incredible. She has something truly valuable to offer and she cares genuinely about the wellbeing of her audience. She wants to create something that helps them.

If you relate to the famous Walt Disney quote — *”We don’t make movies to make money, we make money so we can make more movies.”* — then you’re in the right spot.

* * *

To be candid with you, I am still figuring this stuff out as well. My email list isn’t 100,000 people strong. I don’t make a passive six figures because I have my sales funnels optimized with my lead pages. I’m not against those tools or goals, but I’m only interested in utilizing things that can help me provide the most amount of value to the most amount of people in a way that benefits us both.

That said, thank you for letting me know about your desire to build an audience and get better at marketing your work. Your feedback will help me know what to focus on with the email newsletter and any new projects that I start.

And, as a thank-you for your feedback, here are two resources I think you’ll love:

• The Seanwes Podcast: My friend, Sean McCabe, has a twice-weekly podcast and newsletter where he talks about these exact topics regularly (and many more).

• Platform: This book by Michael Hyatt is an excellent how-to manual on establishing your voice and building an audience.

* * *

If you have any other questions about building an audience and serving them well, then I would love to hear from you!

Please [send me an email](mailto:desk@shawnblanc.net) to share what it is that’s challenging you right now.

Thanks again!

— Shawn