(This article was originally written in 2018, updated for 2020.)

​Articles on how to build a fanbase tend to cover tactics like Facebook Ads, collaborations & cross-promotions, and SEO (search engine optimization.)

I’ll share my thoughts on those, but let's start with the most important thing:

A true audience gives you their consistent attention.

The best audience to build is a loyal following that has grown to count on you, and therefore, an audience that you can count on to engage with your content, share it forward, and to consider your products and services when you announce those.

If you don’t start with that understanding, then you’ll do very inefficient things such as buying Facebook Ads to get more “likes” to your fan page. This may actually move you backward, as you end up with thousands of fake fans, giving you the illusion of an audience, but no one you're actually serving.

​A colleague asked why I qualify “marketing” with “authentic”…

What do I mean by authentic marketing?

Simply put, it’s about honesty.

Authentic marketing is about not pretending:

To be truthful about where we are in our journey (instead of suggesting we are farther along, or to try to impress), or that we are a bigger company, or more polished than we usually are in everyday interactions with our clients.

​Let’s apply this at 2 levels:

The mainstream perspective about being consistent and disciplined can be summarized as “hustle and grind”… a state of busy activity that suggests an underlying layer of struggle and suffering.

Many of us have grown up with such teachings:

• Be “hard” working — to work with diligence, hardship and strife
• Delayed gratification — to reward yourself *later* after you struggle with the “important” stuff
• “Eat the frog” — get the hard thing out of the way by swallowing (doing) the highly unpleasant thing first (basically, delayed gratification)

​There is always an alternative…

​It’s a one-time fee of $120 USD. You get a complete online course about how to make simple, authentic videos (without needing to use video editing), 3 months of feedback on your videos, supportive accountability to get into a consistent rhythm of making and posting your videos, and a simple marketing plan for getting your videos seen by your ideal audience.

Enroll via paypal or credit card by clicking here.

Or read on for more info…

​Check out the following lines. It’s from a sales page by people I like and respect, but I do want to call out some outdated, manipulative ideas:

• You’ll learn secrets for sharing what you do that produce instant trust and desire in your ideal clients
• How to share your story about why you love your work so people lean in and get an “intuitive hit” that they need to work with you
• How to create your unique, aligned, and irresistible “What Do You Do?” Statement

​(I’ve bolded some words and phrases that I’ll discuss in this post.)