Is your audience built on rented land?

Have you heard of an “owned audience”?

If so, do you have one?

If your answer to either of those questions is no, keep reading.

An owned audience is an audience that belongs to you, not a third-party social media platform. Or that’s my rough definition of it for the purpose of this piece, anyway. The actual definition is similar, but a bit more jargon-y.

Put simply, if you have 10,000+ followers on LinkedIn, but you don’t have any way of staying in touch with them beyond LinkedIn, you have 10,000+ followers, but you don’t have an owned audience.

Alternatively, if you have 10,000+ followers on LinkedIn and 5,000+ of them also subscribe to a mailing list via your website, you have 10,000+ followers on LinkedIn and 5,000+ of them are owned. If LinkedIn went under tomorrow, you’d still have those 5k followers — and a way to reach them.

Understanding content diversification

This is an example of good content diversification. Or in other words, not relying on one third-party platform too heavily for your entire content marketing strategy — even if that platform seems to work perfectly right now.

Because the reality is, we all think we’re safe. But when Trump finally announced the long-threatened (albeit brief) TikTok ban in the US earlier this year, thousands of successful TikTok creators were left begging their audience to follow them on other social media platforms, or wave goodbye to their livelihood.

And it’s not just extreme political circumstances that are likely to have an impact on social media platforms today.

Look at Elon Musk’s X. What was once a key platform for B2C and B2B content marketing strategies the world over is now looking more like a graveyard. Since Musk took over the platform in 2022, advertising is down, revenue is down, and interest is down. Text-based platforms like Substack, Mastodon, and Bluesky are full to the brim with users shouting that they’re ‘the new Twitter’ – and on a personal note, my own Twitter follower count means nothing anymore.

Annoyingly, we’re living in an age where any billionaire can buy and ruin any social platform they want. And policy can change at the drop of a hat. And freak tech glitches or cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly common. There’s no ‘safe’ platform on which to build a rented audience.  

The urge to stay put

And yet, a lot of us choose to put our eggs in just one basket. Particularly when we’re dealing with niche or highly specific industries — B2B thought leaders and LinkedIn, I’m looking at you.

We find the platform that works best for us at the time, and we stick to it until our hand is forced otherwise. But let this be your sign, change is possible (and beneficial).

We need to diversify. Not just for the extreme cases like total bans or complete platform redevelopment, but what if a glitch knocks out your preferred platform for a week.

How much would you struggle?

Cultivate your content marketing strategy carefully

When I talk about content diversification, I don’t mean you should put content out across every platform possible. In fact, I’d actively advise against that. Most B2B brands don’t need a TikTok (sorry).

Instead, it’s about diversifying with your audience in mind. If the majority of your audience is on LinkedIn, that’s fine. But consider how you reach them right now — are you relying solely on short-form social media or videos on the feed? Could you start a B2B newsletter on Substack and promote it using LinkedIn articles?

Equally, if you’re already known for LinkedIn articles etc, start thinking about how you encourage that same audience to sign up to your website mailing list. Or alternatively, would they be interested in an event? A webinar? An Instagram account that posts short, snappy reels summarising your content?

The opportunities are endless, and getting it right really depends on who you are, who you’re trying to reach, and what steps you want your audience to take as a result of following you.

Building an audience you can take with you

Sometimes, when you’re not familiar with the value of content marketing, it can seem a bit pointless. And admittedly, there’s a lot of useless content out there. I get it.

But the best — and most valuable — content marketing helps you actually cultivate an audience. An owned audience. The goal isn’t necessarily just to rack up numbers, especially if those numbers would disappear with your favourite app overnight.

Organisations and thought leaders need to look to create content that pushes an audience towards you. That’s things like contact form submissions, subscriber lists, follow-up opportunities. You should know how to reach them on your own terms.

And that’s how content marketing gets results. And I tell my clients this whenever I can. So if you’re ready to move from renting to owning your audience, get in touch.