10 Unconventional Tips to Grow an Audience

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives Saturday Edition where I share insights from the brightest minds in business and life and how I'm applying them to my life.

I’m finally coming around to accept that I am a content creator.

A year ago, I would cringe at the word influencer or creator but here we are. We learn new information. We have new experiences. Our perspectives change. That’s part of life.

Shaan Puri released a pod last week that gave 10 unconventional tips for success in the content creation game. I’ve published newsletters for 6 months now so I decided to use this opportunity to reflect on where I’m at in my content journey.

Through experimentation, I’ve found that I still don’t love social media, but I do enjoy putting my writing out into the world through this newsletter.

Here are the 10 lessons I learned from Shaan and how I’m thinking about each one.

1. Ignore the numbers

Who follows you is more important than how many people follow you.

Is it better to have 100,000 random Americans read my newsletter or 20 of the leaders that attended Davos?

I’d much rather the Davos leaders.

Growing the newsletter is not my goal right now but when / if I decide to focus on growth, I will focus on getting the right people not just anyone as readers. I want people who align with my interests, mindset, and philosophies.

2. The best product is you pushed out to the world

Nobody can compete with you at being you.

Our tastes, experiences, delivery style and opinions are distinct to us. For things that I nerd out on, I know more about than anyone else. So the content I produce around these topics will be better than average.

For me, some of my interests are running, travel, adventure, entrepreneurship, self development, and decision making. I love learning about these topics and taking action on them so it’s best for me to focus on talking about them in my newsletter.

3. Build a magnet, not an audience 

Attract like-minded people into your life.

This leads to deals, friends, and opportunities. I'm already seeing this take place on a small scale with this newsletter. It’s led to interesting conversations, a weekly pickup basketball run, and some new friends.

By putting my content out in the world, people come to me vs having to go out and find people myself.

4. First, last, best, worst, weirdest

This is a tactic to help brainstorm ideas for content.

Take any subject in your life like “jobs, relationships, workouts” and think of examples for each of those 5 categories. This creates a pipeline of personal stories you can tell. This helps you be idea rich and not run out of content ideas.

This came from the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks.

Thus far, I haven't had a hard time coming up with content ideas but this will be the first exercise I go to when I need it.

5. Be well known and not know well

There’s a big difference between the two.

Well Known means a lotta people know you. Known Well means some people know you really really well. The latter is much better than the former. One way to do this is to answer the 5 D’s for your audience.

• What have you done?

• What do you deliver?

• What do I do for work and fun?

• What are my dreams?

• What do you dork out on?

I think I’ve done a decent job of answering most of these questions.

I tell stories about working in the corporate world, pursuing entrepreneurship, traveling the world, and building my life by design.

I deliver a newsletter twice a week with personal stories and lessons learned.

For work - I help creators monetize their audience through systems and processes. For fun - I travel, play basketball, do triathlons, write.

I could probably do a better job sharing my dreams. If you put your dreams out in the world, then it’s more likely for it to happen. I wrote a vivid vision for my life in 3 years. Maybe I'll write an upcoming newsletter about it.

Every Friday issue is an example of things I dork out on: decision making, community, storytelling, habits, and productivity.

6. No such thing as too long. But there is too boring

At the beginning I used to aim every newsletter to be 800-1000 words because I thought that was a good length for it to be a quick read.

Now, I don't really pay attention to the word count.

I always go back and try to get more concise through editing but if it takes 1,500 words to tell a good story then that’s what I’ll do.

7. Don’t worry about writing style or production quality

A+ content and C quality production is better than the other way around.

The design of my newsletter is nothing fancy. Before I wrote my first newsletter, I spent one hour brainstorming some names and logo ideas on ChatGPT. Then, I picked one, then just stuck with it.

Over time I'll look to spend more time on making it look good, updating my website, etc. but for now just the words are all that matter.

8. Create a binge bank

Don’t worry about getting no views at the beginning.

Convince yourself that you’re building hours of your content that interested people could go consume and learn everything they need to know about you to love you.

This is one of the best parts about creating content. Now there are dozens of pieces of writing out there that people can read to learn about my interests, see my writing style, and learn about my experiences. It’s like I’m putting my resume out in the world for people to see if they want to work or connect with me.

9. People don’t want information, they want a feeling

Dana White doesn’t sell MMA fights, he sells holy shit moments on live TV.

Every story I tell should make the reader feel a certain way at the end. If it doesn't then it’s probably not a good story.

I really want to improve on this but I’ve had flashes of doing this well. One of my best stories left many readers feeling surprised and intrigued throughout the entire piece.

10. Be so good they can’t ignore you

Mr. Beast advised aspiring YouTubers to go make 100 videos. But don’t just make 100 videos, make sure that you improve each one better by a small amount.

This is a concept from Cal Newport that I wrote about in the past from a corporate perspective.

Being valuable whether it’s to my employer, my client, or my audience opens up opportunities and provides freedom. I've seen this play out in the corporate world, but am still working on proving it in the entrepreneurial world.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew