How Rand Fishkin built an audience of almost half a million people

Hey friends,

With Thanksgiving behind us, we’ve officially kicked off the holiday season. It’s crazy to think that we’re already in the end of the year, but before we start reflecting on 2022, we still have time to invest in our online presence.

Like most investments, this has a long time horizon and can bring about disproportionate benefits. That’s why in the end of the holiday weekend, we wanted to share with you a dose of inspiration: the story of an entrepreneur who jumped on the audience building train early and has found outsized value from his online presence while building.

Rand Fishkin is the founder & CEO of SparkToro, a startup that helps you learn who the most influential voices for your customers are. Whether you’re wondering who they follow across social media or what podcasts they listen to, SparkToro can help you find out. Prior to SparkToro, Rand started SEO software startup Moz and cofounder Inbound.org with HubSpot cofounder Dharmesh Shah.

Throughout this time, Rand also accumulated a Twitter audience of almost half a million people (!!). Today, he’s sharing his audience building secrets with us.

Tell us about your audience building journey: how and why did you decide to do this?

In the earliest days of my blogging, the goal was twofold: 1) to have a place I could share my content free from the rules and biases of the online forums I participated in (pre-social-media) and 2) to share my journey and knowledge (including a lot of failures) so that others, hopefully, wouldn't make the same mistakes I did. I also had a significant amount of frustration around Google and the other search engines dispensing non-useful advice, and I wanted a place to counter that.

As the web evolved and my company did as well, I found participation in places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and others to be a big part of how I distributed content, and came to earn audiences on those platforms through that practice. When I left my first company (Moz) and started SparkToro (which I run today), I found immense value in being able to take some of those social audiences with me.

What impact has audience building had for you?

The list is far, far too long to spell out comprehensively. Conference keynotes, thousands of people who are part of my professional network, hundreds who are now close friends, introductions to my investors for both companies, employees, my SparkToro cofounder (who initially joined Moz via my blog). It's almost impossible to think of a professional opportunity that didn't start or evolve thanks to my audience building and engagement practices.

Now, let’s get in the weeds. What were the tactics that helped you grow the most? Why?

In the early years, it was consistency of content production and distribution. Blogging 5 nights a week wasn't useful because every post did well, though. It was useful because it helped me figure out what worked and what didn't. Unlike many creators who start off with a keen sense of what to create and what works, I had to brute-force my way into that empathy through trial and error. Today, I rarely give anyone that same advice -- better to work less, but produce things that are more likely to land vs. creating *just* for the sake of putting something/anything out.

In later years, both with Moz and now with SparkToro, varying the content formats and finding the patterns and types of content that worked best for me were the keys. Video is something I got good at, but not TikTok/Insta-style videos, rather educational-style whiteboard videos and now, short, split screen views of how to perform a particular task in a marketing tool or understand a specific marketing concept. I also do quite well on stages and webinars thanks to years of practice.

The biggest distribution and audience-earning technique for me was what I'll call "other people's audiences." By giving webinars, presentations, writing blog posts, editorials, producing research, giving interviews, etc. to folks who had audiences of their own (IRL or online), I managed to find the people who valued what I produced and make them fans/subscribers of my email list(s), social accounts, YouTube channel(s), etc.

What is one piece of advice you wish someone gave you in the beginning of your audience building journey?

Stop working hard. Don't pour hours and hours into stuff you're not sure will work. Put fewer hours into the most productive, most useful, most amplification-worthy projects. Learn how to figure out what people like by consuming the work of others and seeing what's bringing attention. If someone had trained me on that process of audience research and understanding I think I'd be far more successful as both a content-creator and a product-builder.

What is Salley?

​Salley helps you accelerate your career by learning new skills, such as building a strong online presence.