Hey friends,
For the last month or so, based on my 2024 goals, I've been dedicated to trying to grow an audience over at The Commit Newsletter and it's been an eye-opening experience.
As a software engineer, I have always dealt with inanimate software systems.
- Inputs and outputs.
- 1s and 0s.
- Code that works or doesn't work.
There's a black-and-whiteness to it that's comforting.
When trying to grow an audience, you have to let people know about your stuff. People spend time on social media, so I chose to start posting on LinkedIn and YouTube.
And posting on social media is more like playing a slot machine except it's not totally up to luck. You have a great degree of control over the outcome.
And it's a numbers game. The more reach (impressions) I get on my stuff, I can get a small percentage of those people to convert into newsletter subscribers.
This means I have to create posts that get attention in some way and reach a wide audience.
Here are 7 lessons I've learned so far about playing the audience growth game:
1) Get the Title / Hook right
For example, on LinkedIn, my best performing posts have had solid hooks. Some examples:
- "This is the ultimate path to fulfillment:"
- "My honest unfiltered thoughts on fine tuning resumes for software engineers early in their career:"
It sparks curiosity and pulls the reader in, which gives me the opportunity to make my point.
Without grabbing their attention, you lose out on the opportunity to make your point.
It's wise to spend a majority of the time to get the title/hook right.
This is also the same exact advice that Ali Abdaal's gives about YouTube titles and thumbnails.
2) The Algorithm favors persuasiveness.
Most social media platforms are dominated by feed algorithms that emphasize trending content.
By "trending", this typically means:
- High click through rates
- High impression-to-engagement ratio
- View retention (for video platforms)
- Repeat views (for short form videos)
This means that the more the content captures the user's attention and holds it, the better.
Especially on platforms for writing like LinkedIn and X, the writing has to be punchy and persuasive.
3) Short sentences > Long sentences
As a general rule, shorter sentences tend to hold attention better and prompt the reader to continue reading.
Sprinkle in long sentences sparingly as they make it easier to lose the reader's interest.
4) Short posts > Long posts
As a general rule, posts that are too long, regardless of how well they are written, tend to lose engagement.
Unless you are a master of the written word and understand writing for social media, it's unlikely you can hold someone's attention on social media with a long essay.
Opt for short, to-the-point posts.
This means editing down is paramount.
5) Create more than you post
The trap with social media is to fall prey to the content hamster wheel.
It's easy to get caught up in having to create content to post every day.
It's much easier to write double the output of what you need to post and constantly be building a backlog.
6) Create a content flywheel
A tough problem with content creation is needing to come up with ideas.
Nathan Barry talks about how to address this with a content flywheel in his Flywheels essay.
You can create a content flywheel by asking new audience members for topic ideas.
The flywheel works like:
- Create engaging content
- Attract audience
- Ask new audience members for things they are struggling with
- Generate a bank of problems that the audience is facing
- (which takes me back to create engaging content)
The key thing here is that we're "closing the loop".
7) It's okay to repeat yourself
Most people don't see your stuff on social media because the algorithm doesn't promote every post to everyone.
Only the best posts survive and live to see the light of day.
Take advantage of this by portraying the same point and message in many different angles.
This is another antidote to the problem of having enough ideas to write on.
These are the things that I've found valuable so far about audience building.
I'm sure as I venture more into creating content on social media, I'll have more lessons to write about.
This Weeks' Stats
I want to be public about the results I'm achieving since all of this is just a giant experiment for me...
I plan on publishing some version of this every week so that I can keep track of my progress and hopefully, in the process, inform and inspire some people when they set out to start growing an audience.
Total LinkedIn Followers: 871
This week: +11
Total YouTube Subscribers: 8
This week: +8
Total Newsletter Subscribers: 12
This week: +4
New YouTube Channel & YouTube Strategy
I'm still really experimenting with YouTube, trying to figure out everything out as I go... but if you're interested, you can follow my journey here:
I've taken a playbook out of Ali Abdaal's YouTube methodology, batching my titles/thumbnails creation, script writing, filming, and editing into 4 chunks of my week.
It's been working well, I have a backlog of 2 videos scheduled to go out every Tuesday and Friday, and I'm ahead by 1 week. If I have the time and energy, I plan on doing a couple weeks of preparing 3 videos so that I can actually be ahead of schedule by 2 weeks. That would give me a nice buffer.
Once I get to 10 videos and start to figure out the basics of creating YouTube videos, I plan on purchasing Ali's $1000 course, Part Time Youtuber Academy and start implementing things from his playbook.
What I'm Working On
Besides focusing on audience growth (posting daily on LinkedIn and 2x/week on YouTube,) I have a couple of bigger more noteworthy projects:
Turn thecommit.dev Into a Proper Blog
I'm creating a lot of content in the next 2 years about coding, so I'm going to be turning thecommit.dev into a central hub where I can start building up significant domain authority and SEO juice.
My goal is to make it an engineering blog and educational resource that the right people who are looking to get into tech or are early in their careers will get "lost" in.
It'll also be home to everything to come in the next 2 years... At least that's my plan.
Create Educational Resources on Web Development
I'm toying with the idea of creating a web development educational program that's more accessible than coding bootcamps, but still a significant enough investment to be meaningful.
If any of you are interested in collaborating (in any way shape or form), I'd love to chat 😄
I'll probably post an update on the direction of this effort when I have more clarity!
Thanks for tuning into this weeks' personal blog update.
I'll see you next week!
Kan