Tips For Connecting With An Online Audience
Hey guys, it's Philippa Hanna here! I'm a singer songwriter and worship leader with Integrity Music, but also I love to create content for my audience online. So I thought I would share with you guys my top five tips for connecting with your online audience.
1. Find your voice
It's a noisy world out there online at the moment, and there are lots of people making content for online for Sunday morning and for throughout the week. It's so important to find your unique point of view, your approach and to be authentic. If people want that mega church on the corner, they can go there on a Sunday morning online. They don't come to you for that. They come to you for you! So figure out what it is that you do well, and then do that on purpose. Every worship leader, every church leader, everybody with an online presence, has their own unique point of view. So figure out what that is, and try your best to do that as authentically as you can.
2. Don't compare yourself
When you start putting stuff online, you might start to look at your numbers and think, 'I'm not getting as many views likes and shares as another church or another worship leader or another content creator.' That kind of comparison will make you absolutely miserable! What really matters is that you're connecting with your audience in an authentic way like we said in tip one. The great prophet John Mayer said, sometimes we have to prepare to share a deeper truth with a smaller crowd. And if you're sharing a deep truth, it really doesn't matter how big your crowd is just keep doing what you're doing.
3. Be vulnerable and open
The album I just released was my seventh studio album, and I've made a lot of content online. I found what connects with my audience the most is when I'm really me, and when I'm open and vulnerable and real. It's really not as important as we think it is to look and sound perfect! It's so much more important to be real with the people who are engaging with you that way they'll connect and they'll feel a part of what you're doing.
4. Do and review!
In 2018, I made 365 videos for YouTube. And at the beginning of the year, I made some mistakes; I made some audio mistakes, some visual mistakes. So I went away and figured out how I could tweak that so that my user gets a better experience - not so that I look great or that my content is perfect, but so that it's more comfortable for them. So step out there, make content and then make changes as you go along, it's not gonna start perfect, and that's all right.
5. Keep it simple
I think this is a really important tip for where we all are right now, because it's not easy to pull off a full band in multiple locations, or the online message followed by an item, followed by this and that. It's okay to just have one person leading worship if that's what you have access to, and just focus on doing that as well as you can. It's far better to have something simple that's executed well than to have something that's all singing and all dancing looks like Disney On Ice, but actually is really sloppy, difficult and disconnected.
To summarise everything, I think it's so important to just do you and do it as well as you can. Don't worry about what everybody else is doing just focus on the people who show up for you and show up for what you're doing, and try and serve them as best you can.