Write to Learn, Not to Build an Audience

And later, write to teach.

There are many reasons to write. And most of them are bad. The common one we hear all the time is to start writing so you can build an audience.

It seems like an innocent objective until you dig a little deeper. Look at all the people on whatever social media channel you worship who are building audiences. How do they talk? How do they create content? Most importantly, how does it feel to interact with someone who is writing to build an audience? (Especially when their agenda is crystal clear.) The subliminal message sounds like this:

“Read my work and let me own you.”

Seems weird, doesn’t it? Sounds like something a creepy cult leader from the 1980s, wanting you to drink the poisonous Kool-Aid, would say. When people ask you to follow them or make a habit of telling you how good they are at building an audience, you feel like you secretly want to throw up in your mouth. What’s in it for the reader to be part of an audience?

The silly idea of building an audience is based around writers’ owning their readers. But you can’t own a reader. A reader can click follow, subscribe, or like and then leave at any time.

Your writing is not supposed to be a prison sentence for the reader.

It feels plain wrong to write with the intent of building an audience. As a writer, I prefer the “build it and they will come” approach. It feels less like a prison sentence and more like a reader’s democratic right.

Three days ago I had one of those god-like epiphanies. I counted up the number of books I read and it totaled nine. Each book was designed as a journey into learning about a new topic that I would later write about.

Then this idea popped into my head:

“Even if nobody reads a thing I’ve written, I still got to read nine new books and learn from an incredible amount of new information.”

I’ve recently gone deep into the lives of Keanu Reeves, Justin Bieber, Shia LaBeouf, and Mister Rogers. I have learned things about each of these people that I would never have known otherwise.

The idea of writing to become known, or worse, famous, seems ridiculous after reading about these tycoons of the entertainment world. Some of these stories I wrote got read by less than 20 people — but the learning each of these characters gave me will last a lifetime.

Writing to learn makes so much sense when you try it.

Your Writing Is Good for a Point in Time

What you may not have considered is that audiences change. There are people who read my work in the early days that have now blocked me and never want to hear from me again.

There are people that are exhausted after one year of reading my writing and others who have been reading for six years and think what I write is fresher than The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. A reader named Lizzie recently sent me this email as a demonstration of how writers can change.

For a while I resisted reading your articles. However, I began reading some of your latest articles and am now a big fan. I love how your style has changed.

When I asked her to explain her feedback, she sent me this reply.

Your earlier pieces sounded more angry with a lot of swearing. You also seemed to put yourself down a lot too. It resonated more like an angry 21-year-old.

Your current stuff has a more professional and, for lack of a better description, a more grown up voice. I am loving the insights and depth of what you are currently sharing. It has the voice of a soul that has overcome and is in a much happier place now.

Audiences change because writers do.

How does a writer change? Through learning.

As You Grow, Your Audience Grows

What I have found is that as you grow through learning, your audience grows with you. When your audience can see a noticeable growth in you as a writer, they want to stick around to see how you progress.

The early days of my writing journey were hilarious. I wrote startup press releases that were worse than children’s books about unicorns. The next phase was quite a pretentious one where one too many Insta-influencers infiltrated my brain and killed a few common-sense brain cells.

There was the unemployment phase, the romantic heartbreak phase, the career search phase, the loss of several loved ones phase, the LinkedIn ban phase, the stay at home in lockdown phase — each phase carrying many lessons that the reader could unpack for themselves and perhaps apply in their own life.

The audience has grown with my writing and branched out into new areas. I went from self-improvement writing alone to adding in thoughts about finance, careers, investing, relationships, productivity, etc.

Let your audience grow with you. Let the growth be organic.

I Would Write for Free

That’s how powerful writing with the intention of learning can be.

You could take away all the money and just give me the learning and I’d still be here. In the recent, huge drops of online advertising revenue and bloggers' paychecks, I kept writing. In fact, I wrote more and in even more places. Why?

Learning is a drug.

If I learn for myself, then that’s boring. If I learn to share one new idea with one new reader — that’s exhilarating.

Writers Are Not Darth Vader

You can’t control people’s minds and force readers to be part of your audience. The dumb thing about having the goal of building an audience is that you can’t control it.

It’s an impossible goal, so if you fail, you’re going to feel like crap. Writing goals you can control makes much more sense. Here is what you can control:

• The quality of your writing
• The voice you write in
• Your level of empathy for the reader
• The volume of work you publish (not stories you leave in draft mode)
• Your ability to be helpful
• How much of the full story you share
• The amount of learning you do that you repurpose into content

Leave the audience building to the marketing genies pretending to rub a magic lamp and create loyal followers who they believe will be with them until death.

You can do better as a writer by focusing on what you can control.

Level Two: Learn and Then Teach

There is a further opportunity hidden in this audience building mess of a situation.

If all you do is learn and repurpose what you learn into writing, you’re missing the best part. If there were two levels to writing it would be these:

Level One: Write to learn.

Level Two: Learn and then teach.

When you become a teacher as a writer, what you learn gets lodged deeper inside your brain so you don’t forget it with all the information overload the internet gives us.

Learning is nice and it serves many selfish desires. Writing on the internet is nice too and gives you many selfish advantages. But when you write to learn and then go to level two and become a teacher, that’s when your life changes.

A blogger friend of mine started out writing. He built up a massive audience and then quit writing. You know what he does right now? He runs educational seminars in Bali for people who feel stuck in life or want to start a business. There are no cheap sales tricks; just a genuine, heartfelt dedication to teaching people what he has learned from quitting his 9–5 job, becoming a blogger, and then retiring from business to be a full-time teacher.

I have had the opportunity to teach, too, through coaching, public speaking, and direct messages. I never set out to start writing with the intent to become a teacher. In fact, I had no idea I was a teacher until my former boss recognized the shift and told me so (that was a huge shift in thinking).

Final Thought

Writing to build an audience is an outcome you can’t control.

Writing to learn is a great reason to write that will help you put aside vanity metrics and the desire to earn money as your intent.

Writing to learn and then teach will provide you an opportunity to go beyond your selfish desires and contribute something to society that will be remembered long after you leave this world.

Change the reason you want to write and you’ll change the outcome you produce. Choose an empowering meaning for writing and you’ll find a reason to never give up and keep learning in the process.

Why you write is more important than how you write or the size of your audience.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net