Creator Gravity: How to Pull People Into Your Orbit

Virality flares and flades. Gravity lasts forever.

Dec 27, 2024

Substacks. Tweets. Reels. Skeets (I literally had to Google “What do you call Bluesky posts” to find this out.)

We are drowning—scratch that, submerged—in content. The average person processes 74 GB of information daily—roughly 16 movies! For perspective, that’s more than a highly educated person absorbed in their entire lifetime 500 years ago.

We’re tired. We’re distracted. We don't have the mental bandwidth to absorb 99% of stuff.

But there are creators who’ve cut through the digital deluge and captured people’s attention, creators who’ve built an orbit of fans who clamor for more.

Um. How on earth did they do it?

Since 2020, I’ve ghostwritten for these unignorable creators—those with millions of followers and devoted audiences—and discovered what goes into crafting content that gets noticed. (Humble brag but your girl had to establish her credibility somewhere.)

Anyways.

Here’s what I learned: An unignorable creator has gravity.

Gravity is the force that pulls you into someone’s orbit. It’s that magnetic attraction to someone’s work. And unlike virality that flares and fades, gravity is lasting. It’s the difference between being a shooting star and building your own planet.

What is Creator Gravity?

Have you ever binge a person’s stuff right after finding them online? It’s like you’re sucked into their content ecosystem and need more. Following them is a no brainer.

That’s gravity.

A creator with gravity has three values:

Health
Purpose
Energy

The Values of Creator Gravity

1. Health

A creator with gravity cares about your health. They put out “nutritious” content, stuff that leaves you better off after ingesting it—you feel inspired, smarter, motivated, pensive, enlightened, etc.

In other words: these creators would rather serve you an açaí bowl instead of Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavored bacon (I wish I’d made that product up) because they don’t want to fill your brain with blubber and bloat.

It’s easy to see why these creators stand out. Un-curated newsfeeds are 95% algorithmic chicken-feed—it caters to the lowest common denominator and is essentially a conveyor belt of ads, regurgitated ChatGPT slop, and purple prose.

So when a creator puts out something nourishing, it cuts through the noise and we pay attention. To gauge whether a post is healthy, I use a “brain vitamin” scaling system:

Brain Vitamins 💊

Vitamin A - Aha (“I never thought of it that way”)
Vitamin C - Clarity (“I get it now”)
Vitamin D – Delight (“I find this hilarious”)
Iron - Intelligence (“I feel smarter after reading this”)
B Complex (B1) - Truth Bomb (“I was waiting for someone to say this”)

*Shout out to Shaan Purri’s post for the inspiration!

2. Purpose

Imagine roaming through a forest when a mage appears. “Follow me!” he announces. “Where to?” you reply. The mage shrugs. “Dunno.”

Are you following this guy? No, because you (generally) don’t follow people who don’t have a destination. As a creator, the same question applies: Which direction are you facing? And if you don’t know, how can anyone follow?

(Mage metaphor over. Thanks for bearing with me.)

This is where purpose comes in—a clear signpost that tells people where you’re headed and why it matters. A creator cannot have gravity if they don’t have a purpose people can buy into.

3. Energy

Content creation. Social media. Brand building.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s an energy game. Every time you hop on the dopamine-lubed slopes of the internet, you’re absorbing people’s energies. If a creator’s online presence feels forced, flat, or fake, you’ll subliminally absorb those net-negative emotions and scroll away.

But a creator with gravity has energy. It’s similar to what judge Potter Stewart said in 1964 when he refused to define obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”

Energy is a bit like this—you can’t always explain it, but you can always feel it. The Greek’s have a beautiful word for it: “Meraki.” It means to leave a part of yourself in your work.

Examples of Creator Gravity:

• Kat Norton (Miss Excel)

Kat Norton runs a seven-figure business where she “energetically teaches Microsoft Excel.” With 1.1 million followers on Instagram, 960K on TikTok, and features on CNBC Make It, Forbes and more, the Woman. Has. Gravity.

Purpose: Learning Microsoft Office can (and should) be fun.
Health: Kat creates handy Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook tips infusing dance, song, and even costumes. Who said learning Excel had to be boring?
Energy: Kat infuses her creativity and good vibes into every post. (I haven’t found a single Excel creator who is even remotely similar to her.)

• Hannah Williams (Salary Transparent Street)

Hannah Williams made one million dollars in 2023 promoting pay transparency. Her business, Salary Transparent Street, has helped over three million people determine their market rates and get paid what they deserve. The page has over a billion views and 906K Instagram followers. Gravity, baby.

Purpose: People deserve fair and equitable wages.
Health: Hannah has a medley of resources: articles on little-known, well-paying careers that don’t require a degree, videos where people share their wages, and detailed guides on how to negotiate a raise.
Energy: It’s clear Hannah isn’t posting for fame or attention. She genuinely cares about her mission.

• Tori Dunlap (Her First $100K)

Tori Dunlap is the CEO of Her First $100K, a money and career platform dedicated to helping women fight the patriarchy by getting rich. Tori’s book was an instant New York Times best seller and her podcast has 25M downloads. Say it with me now in 3, 2, 1…creator gravity!!

Purpose: Fight the patriarchy by making women rich.
Health: Tori’s content revolves around one thing: helping you earn more money (health is wealth, as they say.)
Energy: Tori’s story of saving $100,000 at 25 is ingrained in her brand, and her fiery and fun personality beams through every post. If someone hacked her account and tried to be her, I doubt they’d pull it off.

How to Create Your Own Gravity

I wish I could give you a clear roadmap but no one becomes compelling overnight. Building gravity takes a long time–years, even–as you figure out your voice and hone your content creation skills.

But here are some prompts to get you started:

1. Purpose

What’s something you wish you saw more (or less) of?
What problems do people naturally keep coming to you for help with?
When do you find yourself saying, “Someone should really change or fix this…”?

Side note: Your purpose doesn’t need to be as ambitious as closing the pay gap or fighting the patriarchy. The goal is to just figure out which way you’re facing.

2. Health

How is your content providing value? (Refer to the brain vitamins scale!)
The Dinner Party Test: Would you genuinely repeat your posts to a stranger at a dinner party? If you wouldn’t, it might be because your ideas are half-baked, shallow, or riddled with cliches.
Have you ever seen the content you’re creating before? Is it something you wish you had in the past?

3. Energy

What’s a topic that riles you up that you could talk about for hours? (If you have ChatGPT, ask it to find patterns based on your old conversations.)
Send three articles to your closest friends or family–two from other authors, one from you—and ask them to guess which one is yours. Then ask them to explain why.
Record yourself talking about the topics you’d like to explore for three minutes. Where does your voice naturally get louder or faster? That’s a signal of an energy spike.

Honestly, there’s a lot more that goes into building gravity. Especially on the emotional side—developing empathy for your audience, overcoming your fear of showing up online, etc.

But this is a great place to start. You’ll know you’re starting to build gravity when you receive messages like this:

This was immediately added to my “kind words to keep going” folder :’)

If people start using words such as “binge read,” “rabbit hole” or say they “never miss anything you write,” when they reply to you, you’re on the right path.

This idea is still in its germinal phases and I’d love to hear your POV as I continue to flesh it out. Until then, remember:

Gravity > Virality. 🪐

This newsletter is part of a six-part series.