For close to 100 years, content creators didn’t have to spend any time thinking about how to find an audience, says Kenyatta Cheese, cofounder and creative director with New York-based audience development and social media consultancy Everybody at Once. The way mass media was distributed – via television into people’s living rooms – meant audiences were ready and (mostly) willing to receive whatever content was funneled towards them.

Now, Cheese has dedicated his career to helping creators and entertainment companies discover the best ways to find audiences online, and build communities that in turn build buzz and hype around a linear property, such as a TV show or film. We caught up with Cheese ahead of his keynote talk at the 2016 edition of Prime Time to get the lowdown on what to keep in mind while trying to tap into and build online audiences.

Considering shareability from the get-go

While it may sound simple, Cheese said the most basic tenet of audience building online is to build content with which people have an emotional connection, which in turn prompts them to share it with a wider group.

“[You have to consider] not just what compels someone to click on the thing, to watch a video – but what actually compels them to want to share it,” Cheese told Playback Daily.

While Cheese admitted there is no secret ingredient to make content shareable, he said it’s important to keep in mind how to capitalize on the activity of fans who want to create something to demonstrate their love of a property to other fans. For example, a trailer released by a producer could be recut as a six-second Vine video or as animated gifs for Tumblr.

Understand the uniqueness of each social platform and audience

Just as important as creating shareable content is deploying different strategies to engage fans across different platforms. Cheese cautioned against assuming an audience-building strategy that works for an audience on one platform will work for all, adding that each platform and group of fans have its own culture and language. He also noted that making something go “viral” isn’t a function of the content itself, but rather a result of how that content is placed within a particular network.

“The folks who love Orphan Black and talk about it on Reddit are going to have a different language and different conversation than the ones who are talking about it on Instagram. If you understand that context first, you can find ways to present your work in ways that are actually optimized for that particular network,” Cheese said.

For example, Everybody at Once worked with BBC America to build social audiences for Orphan Black when the show bowed several years ago. Its team soon noticed fans of the show were using the hashtag #cloneclub to identify themselves and fellow fans. Using that hashtag, Everybody at Once was able to help foster the curation of fan-created content on platforms like Tumblr, and keep momentum going online between seasons. Its focus on the off-season, in fact, lead to an increase in social activity for season two of the show, including 22 times the Tumblr posts and three times the tweets.

Once you have audiences engaged, they can be monetized

While having a large online following may look great on paper, one question that often comes up is how content creators and broadcasters/distributors can monetize an engaged online audience.

The key, Cheese said, is to use social media as a way to get those online audiences excited about real-life events. For example, with Orphan Black, Everybody at Once leveraged the social community it helped to build to create huge “moments” out of off-season events linked to the show, such as the start of season two production or the show’s presence at ComicCon.

“We found that being able to galvanize a fan community around a show and getting them to rally around a show does help to build audiences. It is not a direct causation, but there is a correlation between audience enthusiasm and the things that help with monetization, like ratings or merchandise sales,” Cheese said.