Master the art of content creation: Invoke an audience

If you want to be an effective social media content creator, someone who persuades and resonates with your audience, here's the secret: forget about trying to cater to your followers or subscribers. It's a waste of time.

If I tried to understand what every Instagram follower or Substack subscriber of mine wants or needs, why they signed up, or what might make them hire me, I'd be paralyzed. Too many variables. I'd end up making the same boring, watered-down shit that most people churn out. The kind of content that’s invisible.

Instead, I invoke an audience. I give myself an intriguing problem to solve or question to answer. The audience becomes anyone interested in that specific idea. It's not about pandering to the faceless masses. It's about addressing a focused topic that I’m genuinely interested in.

When you reclaim this power, you stop trying to meet the unknowable needs of your followers. You create for the audience that aligns with your interests.

Even right now, as I write this email, I'm not thinking about my subscribers. I’m writing for myself and for people interested in these strange ideas about audience-building, attention-getting, and creating compelling content.

PS — this is a complicated idea and I’m not doing it justice. I clearly have more thinking to do, but I know there’s something cool here. Maybe I’ll get there faster if I do it “Learning Out Loud” style. Let’s call this version 0.1.