Nurture your audience

As we shift gears from reacting to taking proactive steps, there’s a little mindset I want you to consider: now is the time to build and foster your audience.

Some of you are losing members left, right, and center.

Others are able to maintain your members—at least for now—in part due to your contracts and in part due to the nature of your members’ businesses.

Whatever situation you’re in, you have an asset that you must maintain and develop.

That asset is your audience and your relationships.

Your audience are the people in your ecosystem. They either follow you on social media, subscribe to your emails, and/or are current, past or future members.

This is your chance to show them you care through service. You’re in the service industry after all, right?

It’s your chance to reimagine what you can do for them by thinking outside the box about what you can offer.

Below are some ways I see coworking spaces who are successfully nurturing their audiences right now (members and non-members):

1. They’re bringing their community online; creating a Slack community, doing virtual happy hours, playing games online, meeting for “cloud” breakfast, running webinars, and so much more.
2. They’re selling virtual services like ramping up their virtual mail programs.
3. They’re offering discounts in exchange for longterm commitments to keep cashflow above water.
4. They’re offering resources and guides for working from home.
5. They’re continuing to post relevant, tactful, and service-oriented content on social media.
6. They’re continuing to send similar emails to their members and subscribers.
7. They’re finally starting to use their CRM to manage their relationships.
8. They’re reaching out to every single member personally to see how they’re doing.
9. They’re offering their space up for free to essential services.
10. They’re offering next month for free to their members.

As a result of these efforts, many are able to retain their members and keep even some revenue going for a while longer.

Others are building awareness of their brand, demonstrating their values, and building goodwill for the future when they will need it.

Even if you are at a complete standstill, even if you are barely generating revenue, even if you think you won’t survive this “winter”, there are still things you can do to foster your “audience”.

After all, these are your relationships. They are the lifeblood of your business and will be your best hope at success in the future.

Bring them closer, nurture those relationships, demonstrate your values, grow your “audience”, and prepare for the time when things get back to normal.

I hope this helps for now.