1/ Thoughts on building an audience from someone who has never set out to "build an audience"

Many people set out to build an audience FOR something else. This can work, but it is a trap.

I think people need to rethink this and focus on building "good audience."

2/ First off, I don't think the desire to build an audience is bad. Our filter for who should be able to blast messages to us is a bit off. We find it normal to be blasted all the time by ads, politicians, media and big companies, yet we are skeptical of one person sharing

3/ Part of this is probably a healthy immune system response we are developing to a hyper-capitalism that harvests attention for money. We naturally think "what's the catch?" or "what are they trying to sell us?" or "how might we be scammed?"

4/ I think the more interesting question is "how do I build an audience in a way that might align with the life I want to live?"

This means ignoring follower count and paying attention to the number of positive connections, thoughtful responses & the impact on your own behavior

5/ This clicked for me several years back.

In 2015, I published my first article publicly on LinkedIn after adding the articles feature. I was gripped with fear of what my colleagues might think and worried that my boss would tell me not to post my own thoughts publicly.

6/ My initial impulse to share was my anger at how crappy the idea-space was on LinkedIn. I thought "I can do better than this!" So I published my take on the "future of work" in 2016 and out of the blue a couple people messaged me to meet up to talk about what I wrote.

7/ This tapped into something that was very powerful for me - making friends.

From that day forth one of the biggest drivers of continuing to write was that it was a way to find other people who share similar ideas or orient towards the world in a similar way.

8/ The other positive outcome was that since I actually liked writing and trying to get better at it, "building an audience" oriented me towards doing something I wanted to do.

9/ Despite these virtuous loops, its still easy to focus on follower count

To defend against this I ask myself "how many friends have I made through this?"

My answer has led me away from FB, IG and LinkedIn (used to be good, not anymore) and towards spending more time here

10/ My advice to people early on in sharing publicly is to figure out what "good audience" means for you. It should roughly be:

1. People who you want to be friends with
2. People who nudge you to do more of the things you want to do

This can happen at 50 followers or 5,000

11/ A good exercise is to ask "then what?"

"Why build an audience?"
"to sell a ebook"
"...and then what?"
"and then get consulting project"s
"...and then what"
"and then land a speaking gig"

Flip the ends and the means. Why not just record & share the speech first?

12/ Too many people try to reverse engineer people with high followings and then copy what they are doing. Many times these people have already tapped into a business or other venture which is clouding their activity online and are probably not the best people to copy.

13/ Many people with high followings built organically online had a period early on in which they tapped into good audience

1. they shared + created things they actually wanted to create
2. they found others really interested in those things

You can't fake this stuff.

14/ You also can't always tap into something that will make you money. It take a bit of timing and luck to have the thing you are deeply interested in align with something that:
1. can be sold online
2. can be sold for a high price
3. is something that people are proud to share

15/ My writing on work doesn't naturally lead to a business.

People want to contemplate these things privately and the things I've created typically nudge people towards paths that might lead them to make less money.

This is why I've oriented mostly towards gift models.

16/ So I have 2.6k+ followers now and I'm still not focused on building to make money and I'm not sure I ever will be able to.

The best thing that's happened is that my contemplation on work have reached more people which has led to connections with people i want to befriend

17/ I also have people tagging me proactively helping me find things I'd actually want to read. If you build "good audience," its like joining a fun book club thats always serving up things you want to dive into and align with what you like doing. https://twitter.com/lukebutler/status/1286025428491276288?s=20

18/ My meta point here is that in the digital space its easy to think of ourselves as businesses with profit and followers as the metrics of success.

The real magic is turning 200 followers into 25 amazing conversations and 1 amazing life-long in-person friend.

19/ If your goal is to build an audience FOR something else, especially to make money, you're going to get burned out at some point.

Have those goals, but find the platforms and conversations that make your life better and nudge you to spend time like you want to spend it.