6 Reasons Why Influencers Never Attract An Audience
You want to share your passion with the world.
So you set out to become an influencer by publishing videos, podcasts, articles, or some other form of original content.
But, it can be challenging to build an audience.
I’ve spent the last 14 years helping influencers create original content, attract large audiences, and turn their passions into seven-figure businesses. So I’d like to share six reasons why most influencers fail to attract an audience.
1. Getting Stuck In the Planning Stage
It’s easier to dream than it is to take action. The vast majority of potential influencers never escape the planning stage. They convince themselves that coming up with the perfect plan is more important than getting started.
Planning is no substitute for action. That’s because action is critical for gathering the information you need to make good strategic choices.
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson
The only way to learn is by doing. You must start publishing content to get feedback. And you need feedback to learn and grow.
No amount of thinking or training can substitute real world experience. It can only be earned by taking action, making mistakes, and understanding what went wrong — so you can do better next time.
What’s keeping you from getting started today?
You don’t need to quit your job, you don’t need fancy new equipment, you don’t need someone’s approval, and you don’t need to wait for the perfect opportunity. There is no better time than now to get started.
“Have a bias toward action — let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” — Indira Gandhi
Don’t worry if you’re uncertain or unclear about anything. It’s better to start on the wrong thing than it is to delay starting altogether. That’s because even if you start on the wrong thing, you’ll have a chance to learn and grow.
Takeaway: Separate yourself from all the wannabes by getting started. Every small action is a chance to learn, adapt, and grow. Make a list of things you can do today and just get started!
2. Expecting Quick And Easy Results
Becoming a successful influencer is simple.
But, there is a big difference between “simple” and “easy.” Simple means everyone can do it, but easy means everyone will do it. And when everyone does something, the reward for doing it quickly disappears.
Don’t settle for easy. There are no rewards for doing what’s easy.
Unfortunately, many influencers are disheartened when they don’t start to see early success within the first few weeks or months of publishing content.
Being an influencer requires persistence and commitment.
Most of this time is spent honing your craft, building an audience, gathering feedback, and leveraging early fans to attract new ones.
Time has a way of filtering out the wannabes. The world wants to know if your passion is real or if it’s just temporary. Anyone can be excited about an idea for a few weeks or months, but those with true passion stick with it.
You don’t want instant results. The best opportunities in life have a high barrier to entry. Because the harder it is for others to compete or catch up to you, the more opportunity there is to make a living and do great things.
“My dad told me, ‘It takes fifteen years to be an overnight success,’ and it took me seventeen and a half years.” — Adrien Brody
The good news is that if you’re willing to work hard and create real value for people — you can become a successful influencer!
It’s just a matter of putting in the time and sticking with it.
Takeaway: Every moment spent creating content and gathering feedback is an investment in yourself. Every challenge or obstacle you overcome puts you further ahead of those unwilling to do the same. Stick with it, and you’ll have a unique opportunity to enjoy the rewards of success.
3. Changing Directions For The Wrong Reasons
Few things disrupt progress and momentum like having a new idea that causes you to stop, reset, and completely change directions.
“Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are common. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are highly, highly overvalued. Execution is all that matters.” — Casey Neistat
There is nothing inherently wrong with having a new idea. But it’s important to understand that much of the excitement is based on novelty.
This is a big weakness for many entrepreneurs and influencers.
Ideas are new, different, and fun. They give you a chance to stop taking real action in favor of returning to the fun “dreaming and planning” stage.
But the novelty will wear off, reality will set in, and the stage will be set for a future idea to rob you of any progress that you will have made on this one.
So what should we do when we have a great new idea?
It’s perfectly okay to change directions, but you must do so very deliberately. I recommend sticking with your current plan for at least a couple of weeks while mulling things over. During this time you must focus on continuing to take action on your current plans to maintain great habits.
This is very hard for many people, myself included, but you need to prove to yourself that this new idea isn’t just an escape. And most important of all, you need to buy yourself time to consider the new idea more objectively.
New ideas are like first dates. It’s easy to focus on all the positives and ignore any potential risks or challenges. This is why it’s critical to slow things down.
Start by removing urgency from the equation. It’s tempting to think “this opportunity is so incredible that I have to jump on it RIGHT NOW,” but more often than not — this is just our mind creating false scarcity or urgency.
If it’s a good opportunity today, it will be a good opportunity in a month from now. Waiting gives you a chance to explore things more carefully while continuing to make progress on your current plans.
Takeaway: Let others get distracted with the novelty of new ideas. Focus on taking consistent action. If you feel you must change directions, take time to be sure you aren’t just looking for an escape from doing real work.
4. Relying On Gimmicks And Shortcuts
There are rare situations where influencers win the “content lottery.”
A video goes viral. An article gets shared by a celebrity. Or a photo hits the front page of Reddit, and suddenly it has millions of views.
These events do happen, but they’re often misunderstood.
As a result, many influencers make the mistake of putting all their effort into trying to recreate this kind of scenario. They hope to get lucky by creating that one video or article that explodes their brand overnight.
But viral content is rarely planned in advance.
And it doesn’t always create a positive or lasting impact.
There are exceptions to the rule. But just as buying a lottery ticket is no substitute for a financial plan, trying to build an audience with gimmicks and shortcuts is no substitute for putting in consistent time and effort.
The more you rely on luck and other external factors to drive your success, the less control you have over your future.
The influencers that typically benefit the most from viral content are those that already have a large following. In other words, they’ve already put in the hard work to build and sustain a loyal audience.
“When it comes to luck, you make your own.” — Bruce Springsteen
There’s nothing wrong with hoping your content goes viral, but it’s critical to build your brand around creating real value for real people. In the end, this gives you far more control and increases the likelihood you’ll “get lucky.”
Takeaway: Focus on creating great content for the people you want to influence or entertain. Treat any luck that might come your way as an unexpected bonus. Be committed to being successful without it.
5. Failing To Understand Their Audience.
Many content creators fail to influence anyone.
They may publish incredible amounts of content. But they never find, attract, or nurture a consistent audience. So their work has little impact.
I’ve seen bloggers literally spend 2–3 years publishing hundreds of articles, despite attracting few visitors and even fewer real fans.
This is NOT normal. It’s not “part of the process”.
Being an influencer requires a willingness to listen, and the ability to adapt and connect with people on their own terms.
“A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson.” — John Henrik Clarke
Some content creators are satisfied with simply overcoming the challenge of creating and publishing content. They feel contentment in following through on their plans to write, design, or film original work.
But this alone doesn’t make their work influential or effective.
Successful influencers create content to inspire, educate, or entertain real people. They seek to learn everything they can about early fans, so they can find ways to attract and nurture a growing audience over time.
They become obsessed with finding ways to serve people. They are willing to adjust plans, rethink content, and go out of their way to meet the needs of their audience. That’s what it takes to be a real influencer.
Takeaway: The more you understand your audience, the more you will be able to create unique value that others won’t be able to emulate easily. And you’ll establish deep bonds with your followers that can last a lifetime.
6. Getting Distracted By Vanity Metrics
It can be inspiring to see influencers that have millions of followers. But this can also be discouraging if you’ve been creating content for weeks or months and your work has yet to attract a significant following.
“Vanity metrics are the numbers you want to publish on TechCrunch to make your competitors feel bad.” — Eric Ries
It’s easy to start worrying about total likes, followers, or subscribers instead of staying focused on creating and publishing great content.
So I want to break down three important concepts to understand when it comes to interpreting these numbers and growing your audience.
A) There are two different kinds of followers.
Your content will attract both casual fans and what I call “super fans”. The overwhelming majority are going to be casual or passive fans that are largely inactive. They will follow or subscribe to your content with little thought.
Super fans are different. They love what you do, follow your social updates, post comments, and even share some of your content. They tend to make up a relatively small portion of your total audience but are very active.
Influencers with large audiences have a mix of both. The majority tend to be casual fans. And the longer they have been publishing, the more likely it is that most of the casual fans are no longer interested or active.
This is why YouTube channels with millions of subscribers may only reach 100,000 views on many of their new videos. Their subscriber metrics are inflated with casual fans that are no longer active.
B) Growth is typically exponential, not linear.
Audiences rarely grow in a linear fashion.
Instead, they tend to follow an exponential curve.
It’s important to note that exponential curves start out VERY slow and then accelerate as they build momentum.
A new influencer might only get one or two subscribers a day for weeks or even months. They may get the odd boost from a popular piece of content, but for the most part, early growth is slow or non-existent.
But as they slowly start attracting and nurturing super fans, they begin to build momentum. Their followers start to attract more followers, and those in turn bring even more.
Linear growth moves in steady increments, like 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on.
Exponential growth moves differently: 1, 2, 3, 6, 18, 108, 1944, and so on.
This is why it’s not unusual for an influencer, that has been publishing for two or three years, to have 80% of their audience join in just the last 3–4 months.
It’s often much harder to go from 0 to 1,000 followers than from 1,000 to 10,000. And the same is true from 10,000 to 100,000. Growth gets easier as you build momentum because fans will help spread the word for you.
BUT, this doesn’t go on forever. Growth eventually slows.
This is often a result of one of two things. First, an audience may begin to reach its upper limit, so fewer people join on a daily basis. Second, the total audience size can become so large that the number of people unsubscribing is close to the number of new subscribers during the same period.
C) Focus on attracting and nurturing super fans.
The way to work towards exponential growth is by focusing on super fans.
Identify the characteristics of your most loyal followers. Who are they? Why are they consuming your content? How can you provide more value to them? What will keep them coming back for more in the future?
“The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you’re making sufficiently good.” — Sam Altman
If you serve these people well, they will spread the word and help you attract more followers. And this can ignite exponential growth.
But a word of warning, don’t get distracted by vanity metrics.
In other words, don’t stress about increasing your total followers just for the sake of doing so. It’s nice to be able to say you have 10,000 fans, but chasing these kinds of numbers can be a big distraction.
It’s far more important to have 500 super fans than 10,000 casuals.
This relates back to “hitting a ceiling” in audience size.
Casuals can run up the metrics very quickly, but they can also lower your engagement. These kind of people rarely comment, like, or share your content. And they are more likely to “unsubscribe” from your channel in the future when they inevitably lose interest.
Super fans are harder to acquire, but they increase the overall potential for your audience. They engage with your content and share it with others.
Social platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Medium analyze engagement and share metrics. They’re often used to prioritize content within search rankings and in various “recommended content” sections.
So the more super fans you have, the more likely you are to benefit from additional free exposure on popular social platforms.
Takeaway: Focus on publishing great content and attracting super fans. They will consume your content, drive up your engagement metrics, and help spread your message to a much larger audience.
