Why I build infrastructure before I build audiences
A lesson learned the hard way
No followers. No following. No likes. No comments. Let us be cutthroat and very fair. I perceive this to be embarrassing. Genuinely, seriously, and actually; I think this to be utterly painful and excruciating. As it should be, some might say. No?
Typing this whilst I have two followers is not the issue. Them being my mother’s two email addresses is not the point either. Attempting to gain sympathy is not the task at hand. So swiftly, let us segue onto the next paradox. I know of something much worse and I will get there; watch me put it in sport.
Not even trying to force the issue, however, consider right now. This present moment in our globalised melting pot of a society. How does one even accomplish such a feat? Having nothing; no blueprint, no acquaintances, no nothing on that profile of yours. In this day and age, that is absurd. Let us be real. Surely, likely, hopefully one friend or ten of them could do you a solid; spare a follow or two. Would be nice, no? To not have to start from scratch. Completely.
One has to have absolutely no sense of self when swimming through this specific ocean. A new platform; abandoned and alone. You are quite literally diving headfirst into a pool of sharks and orcas. The tiger shark with its infamous fins, coupled with the black and white whale that kills to earn a name. Lethal combination, by the way. Do you not correlate social media, the world wide web, and our small digital footprints to a season finale of The Walking Dead? Walking bait. No armour. Minecraft at spawn. Getting bitten by a zombie before you even know they eat flesh. Stooping in like a headless chicken does nobody any favours; least of all yourself.
So. What could be worse, you might ask?
Gaining 200,000 followers on TikTok with no net to catch them in.
Trust me; I am talking to myself right now. And to you. Do not keep fish on the very same hook you caught them on. They should go in the boat. So let us build the boat first. Social proof helps, yes. But having nothing tangible will be your detriment before you even get off the floor. A clean website in your bio is the starting point. Link every platform; all of them. Good at video? Do some writing too. Give them options. Versatility. Everybody is so afraid of a large digital footprint. I say create it deliberately.
Orchestrate before you get ostracised.
Give them something to look at. If not a logo, then your face.
The audience will come and go. Algorithms shift. Platforms die. The infrastructure you build; the domains, the systems, the ecosystems; that outlasts all of it. I spent a week this month setting up email aliases, DNS records, gallery pages, and a six-domain ecosystem before publishing a single word here. Most creators post first and build later. I have watched that approach fail at scale; including my own. So this time, I built the boat before I needed the sea.
Start with the net. Then cast.
— Joshua Arthur (@JJDREAMSS) is a digital ecosystem architect and founder of Kings Collective, operating across Amsterdam, London and Oslo.