What are you creating towards?
I read an interesting article that said creators who aren't aiming for something beyond building an audience (i.e., they don't have a great problem they're trying to solve with that reach/attention) are just wasting people's time.
Definitely a 🌶 take, so I'm wondering: why are you creating the content you do?
I don't think anyone's building an audience for the sake of building one. We all usually have a goal. Either we want to sell something or we want to build a personal brand.
Personally, I'm growing my audience on Twitter to promote my SaaS katlinks.io and to build my brand, which in turn will help me promote other things like my newsletter.
I think this can be true but not necessarily true.
Everyone has their reasons for creating content online, and just because one person is creating for their own reasons, and those reasons may not align with the reasons you are creating, does not mean either of you are wrong.
Not everyone who is creating and sharing content online is doing it to make a profit. Would more money be nice for anyone, sure. Would they turn down making some money off their growth and audience, maybe? It can also depend on the money source. People have their beliefs and their reasons in life.
I like to think I am "building and audience" online while I share progress updates or code snippets/ideas on my twitter as I build in public. I don't do that to make money necessarily. Just with the small amount exposure I have gotten from tweeting has led to me having all sorts of conversations with other founders and creators. People that I would never have met in life otherwise.
Personally, I am creating content for a few different reasons:
Some people just like to create for the passion of creating.