As part of the IPF web series program each team was asked to prepare a short 5 minute presentation from a list of topics.  We presented a brief overview of Audience Building and Engagement, with a dash of monetization for good measure.  Here is the video of our presentation and the text notes for anyone who wants to follow along.

How do you get your audience

• don’t fight google – google clearly states the type of content they want to see, which is basically “relevant high quality and current content which satisfies search queries”. Watch and follow the advice in the State of the Index Addresses, I posted the link in the linkedin group.
• create and regularly post unique content – a challenge for web drama which almost always has a limited release. Think of ways to deliver your content to new audiences over the long term.  This might mean additional content in some form.
• commit to website best practices – avoid blackhat tactics and follow google’s stated best practices because they are carefully constructed to increase user acquisition, retention and engagement by improving the user experience.  These are based on massive analytical analysis.
• provide value rich opportunities – “free” as a concept isn’t a very value rich opportunity.  Yes it brings in viewers, but consider providing a little more.  Perhaps offer a newletter or ebook if the user registers.  Perhaps create a contest with some small simply prize and invite your users to participate.

How do you engage your audience

• understand the segmentation in your audience – your audience isn’t segmented as “male 18-25” or “female 35-50”  its segmented by community, social status, religion, social interest, technological literacy, occupation, geographic location, and countless more.
• bring your content to the segmented community – communities form around internet destinations like niche social networking sites (twitter, flickr, facebook, youtube, myspace, linkedin, etc), blogs, forums, games, chat rooms, bookmarking sites, and many more places on the web today. Also bring your content to as many platforms (on and off line) through a variety of delivery portals.  Bringing select content to a destination creates a personal connection with users of that destination, some of whom will seek out more content on your site.
• leverage web 2.0 offerings to create simple user interactions – offer users an opportunity to influence the outcome of their, and their fellow viewer’s experience. This could be as simple as well moderated comments.  The most powerful web 2.0 video tool available to producers, are the Youtube overlay tools which allow you to choosing what video plays next depending on a response or choose what action a character takes, as well as provide language and disability accessibility through subtitles.  Web 2.0 destinations offer all kinds of Transmedia tools to enhance your stories

How do you expand your audience

• internet partnerships – everyone online is looking for the same things; exposure and revenue.  By exposure I mean traffic to a site or some other piece of content, and revenue from any means possible.  You can easily barter for either by offering the same in return, exposure or a revenue opportunity.
• web and affiliate marketing – there are a number of formalized internet partnerships you can use.  Adwords basically formalized and standardized internet advertising contracts for both parties.  But there are others similar networks that run affiliate marketing programs.  These are places where you can offer a percentage of sale in exchange for exposure.
• email capture and utilization – construct your advertising campaigns to provide multiple marketing opportunities.  Perhaps you have a special episode that you can gate, then open it up to people who simply register.  These are the email addresses of your fans.  Then when you have a new campaign you can contact these fans and perhaps get them to help you market your product. For example, send an email that says “Hey check they new Ruby Sky facebook page and share the show with your friends!”
• platform adaptation – In the grand scheme of things the numbers we are talking about for viewership aren’t very big.  The problem of the internet is that is a very noisy place.  People run to the shelter of restricted content platforms like facebook, iPhones, Android etc.  The reality is that there are thousands of platforms for content, and the smaller platforms provide still very sizable opportunities to build an audience and generate revenue.