How do I find an audience and build a community around my media website?

Social media is a good way to spread the word, but first you need to make sure you're delivering solid content and that search engines see you as an authority. The majority of new traffic to a site comes from Google and Bing. Sign up for Google Webmaster and from there you'll be able to see if you're getting indexed and what keywords people are using to find your blog. You may be surprised to find that you're not attracting the audience you think you're attracting.

Good and consistent content is key.

You know how Peter Cashmore built his media empire from his parent's home in Scotland? By working his fanny off and talking to EVERYone who ever tweeted anything from Mashable and responding to EVERYone who tweeted at him. But this was also right at the start of Twitter - he recognized a whole new form of media was rising and rode that wave. For the first three or four years, the operation was completely Pete in Scotland and his team here in the U.S. who worked out of the COO's apartment in Manhattan.

Mashable was a specific focus at a special moment in time - lightning in a bottle, and you can't try to do what he did.

As for yourself, you need to figure out where people who are your target are. And be there. And share and talk and share other people's content if it's on target. Get other people to contribute, and share their posts giving credit to them, getting them to share it, too.

You need to come up with a solid plan for releasing the content and what you'll do on social to back it up. It's very difficult to launch a new content website without money behind it, a recognizable name, or a special niche with content people can't get anywhere else.

Not that it can't be done. but it's difficult. And you need to draw up a fully realized plan.

The key to growing your media empire is distribution. You have to nail down your systems so that every piece of content you create reaches the most people possible.

Focus on one network first and try to build from there. I usually recommend starting with Twitter.

1. Create a few accounts and share via RSS content from other industry blogs. You can set that up via Twibble.io
2. Follow your competitors' followers with those accounts. Unfollow those who do not follow back via ManageFlitter.
3. Share your articles on your main account.
4. Retweet and favorite from the other accounts.

This will create a "network effect" especially if you target specific keywords. Eventually you will be able to get your content to rank high when people search the hashtag you targeted.

Would love to jump on a call and get more involved in the project!

There really isn't a "market" for your own personal blog posts. You need to be publishing in OTHER media sources like Buzzfeed, Vox, etc...Of course link back to your site so you can collect email addresses and build your list. Think of your customer or target audience? Where do they live already? What blogs are they visiting, what groups do they belong to, what newsletters do they subscribe to? Should be easy if your customers are just like you.