In high school I was a "bad" writer. I dreaded writing. Over the years I've been an unfulfilled consumer of books and information. I've realized that I need to think for myself and writing is the best way to do it. Desperate for a solution, I consumed an oceans worth of information on online writing.
There are no recipes to be a writer. I couldn't afford to pay for a writing course. These are my learnings so you don't have to waste your time.
Writing is a tool. The goal is make your writing useful. High school and college teach us to make our writing persuasive or poetic. Which I'm not against. But writing is a tool that allows us to think and explore truths about our lives.
The first step is to overcome the resistance of writing. If you think you have nothing to say, you're wrong. Get writing.
Write the post which would make you jump into reading it. You are your own audience. Write to solve your own problems. On the internet there will be 100,000 people exactly like you.
You are entitled only to the labour, never to its fruits.
There are many benefits to sharing your writing and having an audience. Money, opportunities, connection. But if your writing is useful. If you're solving your own problems. Then understand that that is the value in itself. The fringe benefits of your writing success will be secondary.
Figure out what you want to write about. Pick a topic. A problem. A curiosity of yours. And write about it. Even when you think you understand something well, you will learn that don't. Writing adds rigor to your thinking. It forces you to think about what you are saying.
And making your writing public forces you to up your game.
Forget about finding an audience for now. Follow your curiosity. When you go deep enough, you will find your minimum viable audience.
Once you have started sharing your work online, you might be thinking about finding an audience. Even though going viral may not be your main goal, there might be a part of you that wishes that others come across it or read it. Because you could learn something from it.
On the internet there are platform that have distribution built into them. For example X, Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn. They help you find your first follower.
The next step is to bring this audience from that platform onto your blog. Which is your personal real estate. You can do what you like here. You're the landlord, not a tenant.
This is where your readers can get to know a little bit more about you. This is where you can show some more of your personality and control the platform, how it looks and feels. You can collect peoples emails. You can start a mailing list.
Your true fans will be those who devour your writing. As you go deeper into the funnel you are will find people that are truer fans of your work.
Let your writing be a reflection of who you are. If you focus more on getting attention and growth, then you will end up letting the audience and algorithm dictate your work. You'll be chasing the algorithm. If you are solving your own problems, your intellectual curiosities will guide you.
Now that you have the basics down. You have a good rhythm of publishing work, you will hear back from your readers. They will tell you what they like, what works and what doesn't. At this stage, it is your decision whether you want to listen to that or not.