Forget Going Viral. Here's How You Actually Build An Audience

Building an audience isn’t about luck. It’s about showing up, even when no one’s watching.

When I started writing full-time, I thought the hardest part would be the actual writing.

Nope.

Turns out, it’s everything after you hit publish that messes with my head. That weird silence where I’m hoping for… something. A comment. A share. A single sign someone out there read it.

I’d sit there refreshing the page like a lunatic. Watching numbers that didn’t move. Telling myself it was the algorithm. Blaming visibility. Like, obviously that’s what’s wrong, right? But eventually, I had to admit it wasn’t the algorithm.

It was me.

For years, I did that thing where I’d comment on everyone’s posts with stuff like “Great piece! Here’s mine!” Like I was trying to hand out flyers in a busy crowd, hoping someone would actually look. But no one did. I was basically noise. Polite spam. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I just didn’t know how else to be seen. And honestly? That sucked. It felt gross. Like I was faking it.

So I tried something different.

I stopped thinking about how to get attention and …