🥇 Who should be your first "true fan"?
You.
We can discuss the importance of building an audience until the cows come home. But no one will be excited about your creations unless you are first. Here's how to make that happen.
💬 In this week's issue:
- Transformation. What that "stuck" feeling might be trying to tell you.
- Word choice. Tips on how we can all use language to help others.
- Selfish. Why being your own biggest fan is a hack to long-term growth.
💎 Why trying to be original is holding you back
For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself.
When's the last time you felt stuck while trying to create great work?
As you build your project, whether it's a newsletter, blog, YouTube channel, or product, you will inevitably hit roadblocks. Bumps in the road that stall your progress and make you feel as though it's time to call it quits.
This is normal.
In fact, this is even good. Because these are opportunities for your work to take on a new shape. To evolve and transform. As Adam Westbrook writes, all great art is the "byproduct of transformation."
Don't be afraid of change or back yourself into a corner trying to copy what works for others. "Find the way you do it." Then let that be enough.
— Adam Westbrook
🗞 Latest tips & stories
- How to get more done with completion-centric planning
- Is there such a thing as the perfect article length?
- What does the future of political news look like?
- Why data will only play a bigger role in the stories we tell
- 7 podcasting mistakes every beginner makes
💬 Lost for words? A new, free resource offers guidance on thorny topics
I just want to know the ‘right’ word to use.
Language is an ever-evolving tool and it can be difficult to keep track of how to use it best when speaking and writing on sensitive topics. At Ghost, our team works hard to do this well and honor the global community of creators who make our work possible — but we still have a lot to learn and resources like the following one can help.
Language, Please is a joint project that brought together nearly 300 experts to produce a cultural style guide for modern creators.
On it, you'll discover the history, context, and best practices for hundreds of terms within 6 broad categories.
This is one site you'll want to bookmark, especially if your writing focuses on one of the above topics.
🎶 How one YouTube channel became the 24/7 music hub for students worldwide
Today, the YouTube channel has 10.5 million subscribers and over 1.2 billion views.
We assume that big success requires herculean efforts, complex teams, and eye-wateringly large budgets. But what if one of the biggest music channels on YouTube — a notoriously expensive and difficult niche to compete in — was run by a single creator.
Writer Hannah Doyle discovered exactly that when they profiled Lofi Girl, a channel operated by a French artist named Dimitri. Over the last 5+ years, Dimitri has taken their love of ambient music and Japanese anime and combined it into an extremely successful project.
The article is filled with useful points, but the biggest takeaway is why Lofi Girl began in the first place: because the creator wanted it for themself. They wanted a simple, free way to stream the kind of music they liked while having the opportunity to chat with others.
By scratching their own itch, they ended up building a solution over 30,000 students, office workers, and creators use every single day.
Sometimes creating for an audience of one is all it takes.
👀 Curators pick
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