Before you start thinking about building an audience, you need to build some credibility. People will only listen if you've demonstrated some credibility on the topic.

A few examples that worked for me:

When I had 0 followers, I wrote about why I abandoned a cushy career in big tech. I had automatic authority on this story, since I was the subject.

Documenting why I left all that behind earned me some credibility on how to reason about lifestyle design. https://medium.com/@dvassallo/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts-92c0497cf97c?source=friends_link&sk=283bd1a40a3b79f94a763dab651f0da5

A few days later, I described how I organized my finances as I was preparing to transition to self-employment. I received 200 questions over email/DMs from people thinking about doing the same thing, and that earned me some credibility in personal finance. https://medium.com/@dvassallo/from-employee-to-bootstrapper-941f061f207f?source=friends_link&sk=9213a6ecc186e163bed20f80c511d43d

2 wks after I self-published my AWS book, I shared everything I did to make it happen, including financial details. This earned me credibility in various things, such as making money from digital products, social media marketing, building an audience, etc. https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1216175468681940992

There were many others, but the above were probably the most impactful. The interesting thing is that it took me almost no effort to earn these bits of credibility. A blog post, a screenshot, a tweet, answering a few questions, etc.

I was just sharing what had already happened.

If you did something interesting, but you're keeping it all to yourself, you're losing a big opportunity.

Chances are, you're credible on a lot of things. If you want to emerge from the unknown, this is how you do it: Share what you know, what you did, what you experienced!