How to build an audience as an introvert?

Hey Ryan, I often ask myself this question as well.

I think this is a common case with developers: building an audience is rather a marketing activity.

And they are comfortable coding, not doing marketing. For a lot of developers, if they are not coding, they feel like they are not productive.

Being introvert myself, I also have difficulty going out of the "coding comfort zone". So after many times thinking and reading about it, I came to the conclusion that one great way to build audience is to contribute to the targeted audience.

Like with a lot of things, it depends on what you are doing, but if you happen to be building a tool for developers, it would make sense to be very active on GitHub, on StackOverflow, on Dev.to, Medium, Reddit etc and other platforms. Once you get comfortable engaging with people there, you can go a step further and be active on Twitter or publish YouTube videos.

If people like what you are doing and you are truly trying to contribute and make their lives easier in some way, it is very likely that they will end up following you.

Once you have a product ready, they will gladly support you, give you feedback or even early-buy your product since they already gained confidence.

Easier said than done. But this is my plan for now.

I'm an introvert and run a large online community. So is @rrhoover with Product Hunt. So are many other people with big audiences and communities that you may have heard of.

My first tip is not to buy so hard into the introvert designation. When you believe something strongly about yourself, it becomes self-fulfilling. The more you think you're limited by your introversion, the more you'll be on the lookout for confirming evidence. When I first read about various personality theories in my early 20s and discovered I was an introvert, I ended up having my most anti-social year ever, and actually feeling more tired out by social interaction than I ever had before. Then I realized that was ridiculous.

You're better off believing that you can do things. Then you're more willing to try, which makes you more likely to succeed, which gives you more confidence and belief, and the cycle repeats. I've seen this happen to me first-hand numerous times in my life.

For example, starting the IH podcast, I really didn't think I could do it or be good at it. Luckily a lot of people pressured me to try, and it went well. Nowadays I have lot of reps under my belt.

My advice is to get some reps in. I absolutely agree with your idea to treat this like a task. It's been said that we ship our calendars. If 0% of your time is set aside for sharing, you won't share, so schedule some time for audience building activities.

Start with something realistic: a small amount of time, in a format and on a channel you enjoy, so it's overall easy and pleasant to do. It's not about doing an amazing job at this point. It's about doing something consistently. Build up some solid evidence that you can do it, and use that to propel yourself through the optimism loop.

Btw, kudos for writing this post, which seems like a good first shot at sharing. 👍

I’m a marketer and I’m an introvert.
The good news is that you can easily build an audience just writing things on your smartphone while you are alone on your couch 🙂

Hey Ryan,

Your post really resonates with me. I tend to fall into the same trap.

What I've realized is "building an audience" sounds scary because it's new to me, whereas coding is a known thing. And it's much easier to just do more of the known thing than venture into the unknown.

So, for me (an introvert), it's more about known/unknown than introvert/extrovert. As others have mentioned, there are lot of ways to build an audience, and many of those are compatible with being an introvert.

Just starting the unknown thing is the biggest hurdle, at least for me.

For a short period I followed Gary Vaynerchuk, and while I find it exhausting to listen to him for more than 3 minutes, he has some great marketing advice. One thing he does is to take one big piece of content he creates for one channel, pull it apart and re-purpose the pieces for other channels. Whether it's a blog post or a podcast interview, take quotes from it and post them on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., wherever you think your audience is, and of course, add the link back to the original content.

One thing that I've done for social media posts is to make a big list of topics that are relevant to my product, and then make unique picture posts with Canva, adding a couple of sentences and some hashtags. Then I make a schedule for the release of the posts, making sure to match them up with events or holidays, or in a logical sequence. This way I can make material in batches and have them queued up to post.

The caveat is you have to be ready to engage with the people who comment on your posts to increase conversions.

Edit: Also, people love lists of ideas, like; "10 ideas for improving your writing". They're easy to make if you know the subject well, and it's subjective, so you don't have to have any sources, etc.

I'm the same type of person! Writing/creating in public is key.

What I do is blog/screencast whatever it is I'm learning, building, thinking about, etc... I'm going on about 3 years of it now I think at https://web-crunch.com.

"Introvert" is a label. A lot of great sales/marketing people prefer to stay alone but they have to step up to get their job done.

One phrase I heard 5 years ago was "Tech-founders procrastinate by coding", which got me to rethink my own mentality: am I coding for fun, as a hobby, for my own pleasure, or am I building something other people want and helping others.

If I want to genuinely help others, I gotta talk to people and know what they want. So I prepared a lot of questions. At events, I just ask questions and let others talk. People really love answering questions. I am not an extrovert, but I must do what I need to do.

There are definitely people who coded as a hobby and become big. That works as well, but typically those are the ones who are obsessed and worked on one thing for years.

Either route works. Good luck buddy!

I am so glad I came across this community. Gained and learned so much very quickly in a short amount of time.

I'm curious to know what have you came up with to help you build your audience ?

Hey Ryan, just came across this post and was curious how your plan has worked out? Also browsed around your profiles a bit and it looks as if you are working on a new product most of the time. How are you dealing with the audience aspect there?

I could have written this 😅

Hey Ryan!
Start small.

Try to take one day a month to write 10 - 15 posts for social media. Then, use automation tools such as Buffer or Hootsuit to publish them over a period of a month.

Don't bother about it for the rest of the month.

I am like the fat guy trying to tell you how to diet here, but it's good advice. You want to use your personal blog to teach people. You have to cut the fat out of the content and give them the meat right away. Again, I'm the fat guy here. I do Cooking with Cale (cookingwithcale.org) and I've not had much luck with posting my knowledge on Twitter or StackOverflow, and only moderate success on Quora (1.5k/week). It's like giving a presentation, you have to have some slides and a honey pot. A honey pot is going to be best set as a question your intended audience is trying to answer, like for instance, my next video is "How do you use ice to heat your home and how does the Ice Lung have a negative thermal coefficient?" Instantly from my title, you're taken aback because it's a spectacular claim that will trigger the specifics to ridicule me. The trick is to put the meet upfront and show them how I am biomimicking a lung with ice water condensate to sequester CO2 and show them a professional drawing so the skeptics are satisfied BEFORE they start bombarding you with scorn. Again, I'm the fat dude here, I've just got some experience.