The Easiest Way To Build Die-Hard Fans

By: Todd Clouser

Back in 2017 I read a book called "They Ask You Answer" by Marcus Sheridan.

The book is quite literally 300 pages that is summed up in the title of the book: Anytime someone asks a question, you answer it.

For three years that became the heart and soul of my content engine (going from one to nine million+ monthly views) and I learned some things. 

You may be thinking this sounds like common sense, and it is, but executing it well is a totally different story. 

So rather than standing on my soapbox and telling you to "Follow these three simple steps," I wanna try something different. Success implementing "They Ask, You Answer" comes from figuring out ways to embed it into the things you're already doing, not just following a set of rules.

My goal over the next 5 minutes is to inspire you to come up with your own ideas by sharing some examples, both past and present.

So let's dive in.

Example 1: Nuance Is Your Best Friend

Pretend you have a massive backlog content. Could be blogs, podcasts, videos, whatever; doesn't really matter. 

You just released a new podcast episode and part of your distribution strategy is to share mini-clips on LinkedIn. 

You share the clip and soon after releasing it you get a question in your comments.

*Side note: You talked about whatever that question was in the long-form episode. 

What do you do?

Most of you would do one of two things.

Almost nobody would do this third thing (that would be far more effective)

First, the things most would do:

Most content creators are going to comment with something like, "We went into that in the full episode, here's the link."

(as a consumer, I just want you to answer the question. Don't send me on a quest.)

Or, if you're slightly better, you'll give a detailed comment answering the question and then send them to the full episode for more.

And those two things are great. It's important to engage with your audience. 

But if you want to short-circuit the process of building die-hards you gotta do more.

Think about your kids favorite YouTuber. If you don't have kids, think about your own.

Imagine your child commented on a YouTube video and that mega-creator replied. They'd think that was pretty cool right? They might even show some friends.

Now imagine if that YouTuber created an entire video based on your kid's comment and shouted them out for the idea.

You better believe they're sharing that video with every person they know. You might even share it with your friends too.

^That's the level you need to go.

Even if you already went over the broad topic in another piece of content, you don't build die-hards by sending them to content meant for a mass audience. Anyone can do that. You build die-hards by creating content directly for them that encourages them to share that content with others.

Back when I was creating YouTube content full time I unlocked this learning by accident. We ran out of ideas somewhere around episode 500 with around 50,000 subscribers.

We implemented this strategy out of necessity and doubled subscribers every year for the next three years.

P.S. Keep a running doc of questions from your audience. If you don't have time to get to it now, at the very least it's your rainy-day content so you never run out of ideas.

This does three things:

• It creates fandom. I just gave the YouTube example above, and yes, it still works with a professional, adult audience.

• It allows you to give way more nuance based on their question. Building thought leadership isn't about spouting off big ideas. It's about getting into the nitty gritty. And by answering nuanced questions, you get deep into the nitty gritty.

• It trains your audience to ask more questions, (giving you more content topics) and in my experience it contributes to them telling other people to ask you questions too.

Example 2: Make Engagement Easy (for everyone)

Two weeks ago I stood on stage and made an announcement before our workshop session at Goldenhour, "There's a QR code on the bottom of every slide. If you have a question, scan the code and drop it there. Even if we run out of time, we will respond to everyone with a video response."

We got 13 questions in 40 minutes and most of those questions are things that I'd never think to create longer-form content from, like this one:

And here's the kicker.

When it comes time to promoting the long-form session, we're no longer just clipping it up for short form channels.

We have 13 net-new, nuanced questions (like we mentioned before) that lets us (1) promote, (2) increase the shelf life of the content, and (3) build deeper relationships with the audience.

And this isn't specific to in-person content. Get creative and enable your audience to easily ask questions and you'll do the same.

Hopefully those two examples spark some ideas on how you can activate the most engaged subset of your viewership to create better content.

And if you have a question or want to chat through an idea, just respond to this email.

Stay B2B my friends,

Todd