This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Let's talk about building community through parasocial relationships. This is gonna be a fun one. We're gonna explore how parasocial relationships can impact your side hustle. Learn how to cultivate and leverage these relationships ethically to build a loyal audience and drive business growth. What am I talking about here?
By the way, welcome to Side Hustle School. First of all, my name's Chris Guillebeau. Thanks for tuning in. Every episode, every single day for 2,759 days and counting, we dive into practical and creative ways to boost your income without giving up your day job. And so for those who are not familiar today, we're gonna talk about parasocial relationships, something that people have been discussing a lot online.
Kind of the one-sided emotional connections that fans or followers develop with content creators, influencers, or celebrities. And if you just think about this, their entire world's in communities oriented around celebrities. What are they posting? What are they doing? What is their new music if it's a musician?
What's the new video that they've dropped? And on kind of a micro level, if you are a creator or an influencer, if you want to be, then essentially you are developing these parasocial relationships. It's called parasocial because it's typically one-sided, meaning that Taylor Swift doesn't think of you as much as you think of Taylor Swift, for example, or of course it could be somebody else. And today's question comes from a listener who is curious about how this works in the creator economy. How do you in fact cultivate, develop these relationships in an ethical way to build that audience and potentially to grow your business?
So let's talk about that. I got a couple of thoughts on it. I'm excited to dive in. Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hi there.
I've been thinking a lot about the role of parasocial relationships in the creator economy and how they impact the success of side hustles. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how side hustlers can cultivate and leverage these relationships to build a loyal audience and drive business growth. What are the ethical considerations around fostering parasocial relationships and how can creators maintain healthy boundaries while still engaging with their fans? [Music]
All right, as I said, this is a thoughtful, insightful question. I don't think we've ever talked about it.
Parasocial relationships, something more people are paying attention to these days, these one-sided connections. How do you, again, ethically cultivate and leverage a relationship like this to build an audience and drive growth? Let's give you an example. This is an example of Jenna. Jenna is a fitness enthusiast.
She built this community on YouTube and Instagram, maybe some other networks as well. And she used kind of a storytelling approach. Like she noticed that her audience wasn't just interested in fitness tips, which is how it often is in that industry or many other industries. It's not just about the specific advice. They are interested in her and invested in her, in fact, as a person.
So she began to engage more directly with her followers by responding to comments, hosting live Q&A sessions, and sharing some behind-the-scenes glimpses of her life. And this built a pretty strong sense of community and trust. She then set up a private Facebook group where her followers could share their own fitness journeys, ask questions, and support each other. And she also regularly interacted with the group, offering tips, encouragement, and so on. So what do we take away from this?
Well, maybe some kind of community space where your audience can interact not only with you, but also with each other. Maybe also another thing Jenna did was weekly live workouts and Q&A sessions on Instagram that just allowed that closer connection, the more value, kind of builds like into a regular expectation of listeners of like, oh, every Friday, I'm gonna have an Instagram Live with Jenna, for example. Now, our caller asked about ethical considerations, which I really appreciate. So when fostering these relationships, just important to be transparent and honest. You know, if you're promoting a product or offering a service, if you have sponsored posts, if you have affiliate links, just being clear about that.
And that's totally fine. Like most people don't have a problem with that. The only problem is when they are not disclosed or when there's some kind of manipulation that takes place. So healthy interactions, that's what it's about. Healthy interactions without prying into personal lives.
By following Jenna's example, perhaps implementing it in your own way, you too can cultivate these strong relationships that support your side hustle. I think it's a very sustainable model, at least when it's done the right way and over time consistently. Listeners, let me know what you think. Of course, always love your input. If you have a question or comment, sidehustleschool.com will continue to feature listener stories, projects, growth, launch plans, and so on, all kinds of different case studies throughout the year from listeners and the rest of our community as they launch their projects.
Thanks for being out there. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
