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5 realities about your online audience

Writer's picture: PURNENDU SINGHPURNENDU SINGH

It's a brand new day, you've just started work and all caffeinated up. You fire up the computer, and start attacking your inbox for a good 5 minutes, and then this urge to check your Facebook page takes over. You minimise your Outlook, yesterday's unfinished spreadsheet, and head over to your Facebook Timeline. You're then served an Upworthy post about a young bullied kid, who against all odds defeated adversity. Ten minutes later you take a toilet break and start flicking through your Tinder matches on your phone. It has been an hour, and you still haven't done any real work today.




I consider myself to be a digital citizen. I'm one of those people that really can't remember a life before the internet. Watching the world shift from traditional to online was exciting back then.

Now, I'm watching how the attention economy is being monopolised by the few, and just how much businesses, bloggers and everyone in between is fighting for the same screen space and eyeballs.

Here's what you need to know about digital citizenry, and your place as a contributor to the internet.


Sex, BuzzFeed, YouTube and memes.

Lets face it. Being connected to the world 24/7 has its perks. You can buy, sell, stalk, and find out anything in no time. It also makes it easier to work and hire, but there's no real fun in that for the internet majority. What is fun though, is wasting time.

Feel like some music? Spotify. Want to watch some stuff? YouTube. Read something entertaining? BuzzFeed. Porn is more accessible than ever, you can judge your friends on Facebook from afar, and get fed instantaneous opinion on any thing via Twitter. In fact, there's just so much stuff you can do online, it leaves little time to be sold to, or to make any unnecessary attention-shifting movements from what you already know, what you already love, and what already works.



What's in it for me?

So, you have to ask yourself: What am I contributing to the world? Is my product amazing? Is my content incredible? Am I doing things better, cheaper, faster, funnier, sexier, more emotional, more controversial? Or am I simply chasing my tail, chasing my competitors, and chasing the wrong audience?

Digital citizenry are one thing: selfish. They want it all, and they want it easy. Captivation is the new currency, and you're fighting against multi-millions of others looking to get the same thing.

What do you provide that web users can't get anywhere else?


No one else seems to care.

You hear the words 'popular' and 'trending' thrown around the web. This isn't to be taken lightly. In fact, for something to 'trend' these days, there's generally a captive audience in the millions. No one cares about what you have to say, or your product, until everyone else cares.

You might have a brilliant product, priced beautifully, with an online personality, reputation and customer service that outshines Amazon, but it's not until you become mainstream within your niche, that you'll attract online users. The end goal is to turn these users into brand ambassadors: Using their own, precious time to promote and defend your presence.



Who are you, again?

Which brings me to this next point. No matter how good you are, no one is going to take your word for it. People don't 'really' trust you, they trust the collective opinion of your audience or previous customers. Your reputation won't ever improve online so long as you don't trust the internet to make its own opinion about you. Enter Yelp, Product Review and online forums.

Here, your captive audience expresses their opinions, both good and bad, without prejudice or control from you. This is where your next sale, your next subscriber, and your next brand ambassador will come from. Try to control this and it'll backfire significantly.

Online reputation is won by looking after your audience first. That means providing incredible quality, incredible customer service, and a reason to be engaged with.



You have to earn 'procrastination time'.

Brand ambassadors, the attention economy, and the currency of captivation. These are the three ingredients to measurable online success, no matter what your venture is.

Fighting for consumers to open up their wallet is not just about advertising spend any more, it's about creating an infectious online personality, and injecting your brand into the most valuable time of all: procrastination time.

It's about creativity, about listening more than you talk, about respecting the fact you're just a human, looking for other humans to notice what you're doing, and treating the digital world the way you wish everyone would treat you.

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© 2022 by Purnendu Singh

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