Don't just hide in your own kingdom

This is a follow-up to Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms.

Original: Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms

If you’re like me and already hate social media, algorithms, and platforms controlling everything, if you long for the peace and quiet of a world without social platforms, it’s easy to draw a very comforting conclusion from that article:

Then I just won’t play.

Delete all my social media accounts. Don’t use Threads. Stay off Facebook. Ignore Instagram.

I’ll just write my own blog, run my own newsletter, and build a castle in my own kingdom.

Quiet and free.

But if we actually do that, we may miss the more important second lesson from the original article:

SHAMELESSLY USE THE OTHER KINGDOMS JUST LIKE THEY ARE USING YOU!

A kingdom no one knows about

I like my own little corner of the world.

No platform tells me how long my writing should be. No algorithm decides who gets to see my work. I don’t have to worry that my account might suddenly be suspended one day.

Because this is my kingdom.

But today, as blogs and SEO gradually decline and attention concentrates on social platforms, building a beautiful castle in our own kingdom isn’t enough if we want more people to see our work.

We have to leave the castle and go find people.

And almost everyone else is gathered in other people’s kingdoms.

They may be scrolling through Threads, watching Reels on Instagram, or watching videos on YouTube.

Maybe 99.9% of them don’t care about my little kingdom at all.

But there’s still the remaining 0.1%. They might like my articles, my books, my podcast, or my app.

They just don’t know I exist.

Go steal subjects from other kingdoms

That’s why the original article’s second lesson has been my biggest revelation lately:

Shamelessly march into other people’s kingdoms!

Post. Comment. Join conversations. Promote your work. Do whatever you can to get noticed by people who don’t know you yet, then bring the ones who genuinely care about your work back to your own kingdom.

Come subscribe to my newsletter, browse my blog, and buy my work!

There’s no need to feel bad about using a platform’s reach.

This has always been a relationship of mutual exploitation and competing agendas.

The platform wants to profit from my content and attention. I want to use its reach to find my readers.

Leave your kingdom and go find your people

Hiding in your own kingdom is comfortable.

You don’t have to deal with algorithms you hate or cultures you dislike.

You don’t have to promote yourself or face criticism and rejection from strangers.

But most creators aren’t monks trying to retreat from the world.

We create because, at least in part, we want more people to see our work.

So if we want more people to know where our kingdom is, we still have to summon a little courage, leave our castles, carry a megaphone into those unfamiliar, noisy public squares, and shout along with everyone else:

Come visit my little kingdom and see my cute castle!