Writing tips

Good things come to those who wait, and for experimentalists, it’s never too late to become original. After Frank Lloyd Wright received the contract for Fallingwater, his most celebrated architectural work, he procrastinated for nearly a year while making sporadic drawings before finally completing the design at age sixty-eight. Raymond Davis shared the Nobel Prize in physics for research that he started at fifty-one and finished at the tender age of eighty. The more experiments you run, the less constrained you become by your ideas from the past. You learn from what you discover in your audience, on the canvas, or in the data. Instead of getting mired in the tunnel vision of your imagination, by looking out into the world you improve the acuity of your peripheral vision.

– from “Originals” by Adam Grant

Here is Mark Schaefer’s second of the three rules for creating effective social media content, from his book “Known”:

Rule #2: Answering and Insights

A great way to begin your content journey is to start with an­swers and end with insights. Let’s unpack that idea.

If you’re in a niche without much competition, an easy way to begin creating content is to brainstorm every question you can dream of related to your sustainable interest, and then an­swer them through a blog, video, or podcast. This is an effec­tive way to dominate an uncontested niche and possibly attract search engine attention through “hygiene” content, which I ex­plain in the previous chapter.

Here’s a trick to get you going: Go to a website called An­swerThePublic.com. On this site, you enter keywords and it delivers questions people are typing into Google about that topic. Essentially, it’s a content idea generator!

Answering customer questions is a solid strategy for begin­ners, but it’s not ideal in every situation, especially in a more crowded content niche. In that situation, you need to focus on insights instead of just answers.

For example, I often write on the topic of marketing strat­egy. I consulted with AnswerThePublic.com and found that a popular topic for me would be “Why Social Media is Impor­tant.” I Googled this phrase and got 255 million results. That’s an incredibly saturated topic. If I were to write a blog post to answer that question, I would only be contributing to the noise!

For me to become known in that information-dense envi­ronment, I’d have to do something bold, like offer “hub” con­tent – case studies, opinion pieces, research insights, and strat­egies you won’t find anywhere else.

An advantage of hub content is that it’s more likely to keep readers (or viewers) on your site. With hygiene content, after people get an answer to their question, they leave your site and go back to their lives. Hub content is more likely to attract readers who will stay and look around to learn more. Here are three individuals becoming known by pushing be­yond the ordinary question/answer format:

• Mimi Thorisson became a celebrity in the highly com­petitive world of food blogging by combining astonish­ing photography, art, and recipes in a blog called Man­ger (French for “to eat”). Her consistent and beautiful work has led to a television show, book, and speaking appearances.
• On the site IQuantNY, statistician Ben Wellington tells stories of what public data means to citizens of New York. His blog provides fascinating revelations about the city’s budget, sewage, parks, and nightlife, among other topics. The popular blog has helped propel his career as an edu­cator and analyst.
• Momastery is a mommy blog about “unleashing the sis­ter warrior.” Blogger Glennon Doyle Melton brings her extraordinary heart, humor, and bravery to her storytell­ing, which she has leveraged into best-selling books and a successful speaking career.

Answering questions is a great place to start, but consider adding bolder and more insightful types of content over time to grow your actionable audience.

– from “Known” by Mark Schaefer

There are three fundamental rules of creating effective social media content that I feel are “can’t miss” prin­ciples. No matter what type of rich content you choose, keep these three rules in mind. Here is rule $1:

Rule #1: Add your own story

The world doesn’t need another post entitled “Common Twit­ter mistakes.” However, I would read posts with headlines that offer something original, like:

• “Five things I want to destroy on Twitter”
• “The five strangest tweets I’ve ever seen”
• “How Twitter saved my marriage”
• “The 20 stupidest things you can do on Twitter”

That last one? I actually wrote that post. It was my first “vi­ral” blog post because it was retweeted by Pee-wee Herman, who has 3 million Twitter followers. When he shared it with his audience, it drove so much traffic to my website that it shut down my server. My business temporarily melted from the Pee-wee Heat.

To stand out, you need to be original, and to be original, you must possess the courage to add your own narrative to the mix. There’s only one you. You have no competition. Never publish content that can be created by someone else.

The ultimate goal of your content is to build an emotion­al connection between you and your audience. Truly human content leads to awareness, awareness leads to trust, and trust leads to loyalty.

What are some characteristics of human content?

• Vulnerable
• Personal
• Bold
• Unguarded
• Generous
• Confident

A common issue is deciding how much “humanity” is best for your personal brand. Demonstrating honesty and openness doesn’t mean spilling your guts. To me, human content builds em­pathy and connection by offering a glimpse of your personality.

Here’s an example: A blogger from Sweden posted a photo of his office setup. He said, “Today, I thought I would show you where I work.” This unpretentious piece of content was simple, but it created intimacy by revealing something personal.

On the other end of the scale, there are many who have be­come known by sharing their lives in the open, like Jenni Pro­kopy. While working in the construction industry, Jenni start­ed a passion project on the side, a blog called “ChronicBabe” to help other women who live with chronic illness.

At the age of 25, Jenni was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Soon after came diagnoses of asthma, anxiety, GERD, thyroid disease, and more. She struggled for years, taking test after test and trying an assortment of medications, diets and health pro­grams in an effort to control her symptoms.

Through ChronicBabe, Jenni reveals the travails of her daily life to teach other young women how to live with confidence, have a successful career, and nurture lifelong relationships.

Her personal brand has now become her full-time business. She’s known for her transparency and acceptance of imperfec­tion but has struggled at times to find a personal/public bal­ance, especially when she was going through a divorce. Was she revealing too much, or would she become irrelevant if she portrayed a picture of herself that was too curated? Ultimately, she discovered that when she had the courage to be vulnerable, her audience respected her and trusted her even more.

There is undeniable power in being present through your content. Your personal lessons can instruct and inspire. But you don’t need to feel guilty or phony because you don’t share everything. We all edit our public images to some extent, and that’s OK. You have a personal brand, but you’re not a brand like a Snickers bar ready to be plucked from a shelf. They aren’t the same thing.

I’m a private person, and I have to push myself to disclose aspects of my life in public. And yet, each time I open up a little, I’m greatly rewarded by reader feedback. I’ve become more open because my audience wants me to be. Rock star Pete Townshend once said, “I would have enjoyed keeping my private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audi­ence who said your private pain, which you have unwittingly shown us in your songs, is also ours.”

You see, we create content. But content also creates us.

I use transparency in my writing to reinforce that we’re all equal in our human condition. We all suffer and stumble through life at times. I also reveal details of my life as indica­tors of my values. I think it’s fair for my audience to know what I stand for. Setting a boundary allows me to create human con­tent in a way that feels honest and comfortable.

Whatever decision you make, maintaining your personal brand shouldn’t feel like identity labor or like you’re putting on an act. Choose what to share, but don’t be a fake. In the process of becoming known, you get to decide what is part of your professional persona and what isn’t. You don’t have to follow someone else’s path or the expectations social media tends to set for us. And your audience – the right one, anyway – won’t judge you for your choices. They’ll cheer you all the way.