Writing is Networking for Introverts | by Byrne Hobart

Focus on the micro, not the fame. Micro-fame just means your friends-of-friends have a nonzero chance of knowing who you are and striking up a conversation with you about something mutually interesting.

To an introvert, this is nirvana:

• You don’t have to introduce yourself to anyone.
• You don’t have to conversationally grope around for something to talk about.
• Your conversational partners are pre-selected for having shared obscure interests.

There are a couple of problems with this, one of which is that plenty of normal people do this, too, just for broader interests: there’s a difference of kind, not degree, between someone who only wants to talk about weather, sports, and national politics on the one hand, and someone who only wants to talk about computational biology.

But a side effect of the writing-as-networking strategy is that writing about your other interests gets other people interested.