from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to start a public identity from scratch in late 2022?

by oliverjudge on 12/22/22, 5:59 PM with 15 comments

For the past few years conventional wisdom would have said to spin up the the usual socials (Twitter for thought, Instagram for visuals, Short Video for younger audiences), but with the amount of turmoil in those spaces at the moment are they really the best places to start building an individual platform.

I've seen a movement back to personal blogs and newsletters but do they provide enough discovery to help people find you?

If you were starting from nothing today where would you put the focus for where your content lives and how you distribute it?

  • by bananarchist on 12/22/22, 7:59 PM

    Go to your city council meetings and volunteer with your local homeless services providers. Write regularly to your local newspapers if there are any, and be active on Nextdoor. Go to local events like parades, markets and festivals and make sure you introduce yourself to local business owners and other community leaders. In each of these venues, present the you that you want known.

    If the necessary events and such are lacking in your community, start organizing the types of events you would want to attend.

    Oh wait do you mean by “public identity” that you’re looking to get internet famous?

  • by deegles on 12/22/22, 8:05 PM

    Here's how I would do it:

    1. Use a pronounceable password generator to find a short, memorable name. Like this one set to all lowercase characters: https://www.lastpass.com/features/password-generator

    2. Plug it into https://www.namecheckr.com/ (or similar tools) to see if it's available everywhere

    3. Buy the .com, .co, any other domain that interests you and register on every social site you can (even if you don't plan on using it)

    4. self host a blog on your primary domain and make the other ones redirect to it

    5. set up google workspace email on your primary domain and alias the other ones to it as well

    If you're publishing a tweet or blog post, post first to your site and then on social media, linking with a canonical tag if available.

  • by jameshush on 12/23/22, 7:57 AM

    Just pick one and start posting. It doesn’t matter where you start, it’ll take 100 posts/videos/presentations/whatever before you’re decent enough for people to pay attention anyway.

    I went to 2-3 open mic comedy nights a week last year just focusing on developing the craft of presenting. On top of that I started teaching free engineering workshops and filming them. Its been about a year and I’m still in the “Just throw stuff at the wall” phase. I don’t have much “clout” but its been a lot of fun and my craft is 10x better than last year

  • by Pyrodogg on 12/22/22, 6:50 PM

    Increasingly, everywhere and all at once.

    Even YouTube is now starting to enable (and subtly push) more text and picture content alongside video. The Community tab feature used to be gated to channels with more than 1000 subscribers but now it seems to be available to maybe everyone. The other days I noticed a very prominent "Create Post" button from the video share menu.

    All of the feature copying between major platforms and wall raising may increasingly trap attention within different platforms.

  • by dimitar on 12/22/22, 6:38 PM

    Nothing beats a domain + website, then you can link all kinds of accounts there.

  • by actually_a_dog on 12/22/22, 7:33 PM

    Why?