Tyra Banks on creating demand with audience empowerment

Lessons gleaned from Banks’ newest venture?

• Empower your audience. The data is available and the demand exists, so do your homework and listen up.
• Leverage your network by pulling in the experts you know who can speak to your audience on the topics they care about. Knowing what they want is half the battle — so when you do know that, make sure you go all out to give it to them.
• Use your social channels to ask for feedback on what your business is doing — or not doing — to best serve customers. Banks says she frequently surveys her Twitter following to ask for advice and suggestions on her business ventures.

Banks may be on a mission to empower women, but in doing so she is highlighting one of the most important tenets of social media: empowering the audience. By bringing them into the content equation, she’s moving toward a new kind of user-generated content — that which people suggest without even knowing it.