A Brilliant Target Audience
As a creative person, and that includes artists, entrepreneurs, and almost everyone working, thinking and problem-solving, we are familiar with the idea of our inner critic. It is that voice that tells us we are doing it wrong. Generally, it has more creative words than just ‘doing it wrong.’
This week I heard writer Joshua Mohr talk about the concept of the Toxic versus Good Target Audience.
We all know the ‘toxic audience’ as a form of our inner critic. But have you thought about your ‘good audience?’
I loved that idea and think it will be very useful for many people. He mentioned it in his CreativeLive class which you can check out here.
OUR TOXIC TARGET AUDIENCE
He pointed out how we stumble into the mindset of our critic by thinking of toxic detractors. These are not real people but rather imaginary readers who won’t get our work, who will tell us they don’t get it and who will leave bad reviews. Mind you, none of this has happened in the writing or content generation stage, it is just in our mind.
While it is important to investigate constructive criticism even when it is painful or potentially disruptive, when putting your thoughts on paper, that is not the time to open up these avenues of questioning.
The time to investigate is before you sit down to write or present your ideas.
When we are generating ideas, we need to say thank you toxic audience members, you can go now.
THE GOOD AUDIENCE
Our Good Audience is the one that is aspirational. It is our imaginary audience that will inspire us to do our best work.
The idea is, rather than focusing on naysayers to our ideas, to focus on those who will support our ideas. Even if it is just a small cohort.
Mohr referred to writers and artists who inspire him, living and dead.
He writes for brilliant readers.
The idea is to aspire that our work is read, heard, and experienced by our best, most intelligent and inspiring audience.
Back in January 2020 I heard this idea expressed by Gloria Steinem in an interview on City Arts & Lectures.
“I worry that we as women, if we were in a situation where we have 400 people on this side of the room who are ready to go and act and there were 100 people on that side of the room who were saying ‘no, I don’t want to do that, it’s the wrong thing,’ I fear that we would try to go over and try to convince the 100 instead of moving with the 400.”
WHO IS YOUR BRILLIANT AUDIENCE
Who is your brilliant audience?
Who are the people that support your work and want to help it go further?
If you had an ideal audience, living or dead, who would inspire you to present your ideas without filters but in their full, robust, unapologetic richness?
NAME YOUR ‘GOOD’ AUDIENCE
When I was making my documentary, Beard Club, one of the people in my mind was the French filmmaker, Agnes Varda.
As I’m writing a book about the WeStory, one of the people I keep in mind is Elif Shafak who is a Turkish fiction author who speaks eloquently and powerfully about the power of empathy in storytelling and the role writing can play in humanizing peoples who have been marginalized and dehumanized by cultural and societal narratives.
Another brilliant audience member for my work is author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who writes about the vital role of bringing unheard voices into the narrative by writing these stories.
BECOMING FIERCE
We can go farther if we expand our thinking out to those who believe in mission, values, wishes, and visions for a future we can’t yet see but which we know if possible.
It is time to move from feeling fearful to be fierce.