I know tons of smart people with bags of potential who are tired of the content treadmill and lack of audience growth.

I was one of them. I find it frustrating that you can build an audience so slowly despite giving amazing value for free.

Sound familiar?

Looking at larger influencers’ accounts can feel like a gut punch. So I had to figure out how they do it.

Right now most people are slowly, painstakingly rowing their boat out into the ocean in search of a deserted island.

Holding a flag and saying to anyone who will listen, “Come join ME”.

Now what IF your audience doesn’t need to go to your lonely Island with you?

What if YOU don’t even need to go to your lonely island?

What if your audience of over 100k is already congregating in a huge city like New York?

A ready-made community of your target audience consuming everything they can about your category.

You can ride the ferry and be with them in a few minutes.

So rather than trying to build it all, let’s find the tribes and build you a 100k audience like the pros.

I’m going to break down three successful examples of audience building, but first, you need to understand how this works.

How Does Building an Audience Really Work Now?

The brutal fact is that most content, good or bad, Human or AI-generated is rarely seen.

That’s why most content creators know that they must use Category Collaboration.

Most movements are NOT unique, there are already players in the field. The most successful of these, join forces. They recognise the value of synergy:

The sum of the whole is greater than the parts combined.

Synergy; A benefit of Competitor Category Collaboration

Creators with like-minded philosophies are working together, growing a larger movement and creating tribes to the wave already in flow.

This doesn’t mean you need to blend in, you must still use your unique perspective.

But It means you need to think bigger. More about transformation. And stop thinking of competition, ego or me. There are no sole winners or losers, everyone plays their part.

Let me show you three examples of competitor creators with over 100k followers leveraging collaboration to build a larger stronger tribe and movement.

Three examples of Category Collaboration working for Top Competitor Creators & Entrepreneurs :

1 – Linked In: Justin Welsh (705k) and Dan Koe (159k)

Justin Welsh with over 700k followers on Linked In, and Dan Koe with over 150k, both write newsletters around solopreneurship and sell digital products to the market.

These guys frequently take each others’s posts and repost adding extra context or perspective. This works really well across platforms including X and Linkedin.

Regardless of the overlap, both creators believe in the movement of freedom associated with one-person business.

They support each other’s work. And it works.

Their community consumes both newsletters and social media accounts and buys courses or programs from both creators.

Think of it this way, you don’t just buy one self-help book. If you are into personal growth you buy them all.

2. Instagram & Podcast: Amy Porterfield (460k) & Jenna Kutcher (1m)

Amy with over 460k followers and Jenna at over 1m, didn’t even know each other until they met at an event.

After this, they became friends and accelerated both brands by sharing their friendship and each other’s programs and podcasts.

Both business owners share the same target audience and have leveraged greater reach.

I was recently on a call to one of my biz buddies who said that she’d never heard of Jenna until seeing Amy’s post. Which is the work of collaboration in action!

Amy felt so strongly about this form of Competitor Category Collaboration that she even posted it on her account. See I’m not lying.. the bigger approach works.

3. YouTube: Preston (29.7m) & Ben Azelart (34m)

Watch any large YouTube channel and you will notice tonnes of collaborations. Featured guests from within the same category, with the same target audiences.

If you have kids, you may have heard of these two.

Preston has over 29m subscribers and Ben Azelet has 34m. YouTubers will approach each other with creative video ideas and look to collaborate to grow their channel subscribers.

If you follow a genre, you will binge all the content and pick up other recommended channels with the same interests. This way you DON’T need to feel threatened by people subscribing to competitor accounts.

How can you use Category Collaboration to build an audience of over 100k?

Before we delve into the process, you need to address your beliefs about competition. In the content creation space, there is so much depth and so much more consumption of similar content you need to become comfortable with competitor collaboration. Then get building:

1. Research top influencers, and content creators in your field. Focus first on a sweet spot where accounts are just a little larger than yours.
2. Comment your perspective or add questions to their posts – adding engagement to their work is a win-win for them.
3. Support and use their work: Quote their books, tweets, videos, articles or other work on your own accounts.
4. Share this with them. In a non-expantant way. Remember reciprocity is not always followed through.
5. Share resources. When you find research, tools, podcasts or books that they may find interesting – share it with them.
6. Suggest a call. You could at this point suggest a collaborative Live, a Podcast episode, a YouTube video.. or another idea.

If you are confused about how this fits into your niche, then you’re going to love future newsletters. We go deep on Niche, Category design and more.

Thanks for reading

Sue

PS By popular request I’ve started a wait list for my: Build your Community Email List in under 2 hrs Crs [Newsletter & Lead Magnet] – If this is STILL on your ‘to-do list’ Hit me a message to say Add me to the list!

PPS follower and subscriber counts were accurate at the time of publishing on 11th Feb 2025.

Check back next week – we’re talking about Finding your Niche and Life Purpose!