I used to think that being a content creator meant picking a social media platform and posting engaging value driven content to it in order to grow an audience. Of course, that’s certainly part of it, but lately I’ve managed to see that it is so much bigger than that. I’ve started to see my content creation as an interconnected web of processes that create, distill and distribute content in an optimal way to reach my end goal.
Focussing on what my end goal is was the catalyst to finally understanding how to build a content strategy, rather than just aim for higher follower counts. The end goal is more than a follower number, it’s to have a base of people that truly resonate with my content. Having a loyal and engaged audience means they will give you the most valuable asset on the Internet today; their attention.
I’m primarily a YouTube creator but I’ve crossed paths with many people who run successful blogs and niche websites ranking on Google to attract traffic and ultimately earn money through affiliate marketing or product promotions. I’ve never really been keen to follow that model as it just always felt I was at the behest of the Google algorithm and, more importantly, if they turned off the tap I would have no following to fall back on. High intent SEO traffic is certainly the easiest to convert into hard sales, but these are mission orientated visitors who will probably not stick around. I always preferred the idea of fostering trust over time, building communities and a more engaged audience that could lead to conversions over time.
The recent Google update gave me a lot of pause for thought. For those that don’t know Google just dropped a huge update to their ranking algorithm that overnight obliterated many niche websites and affiliate marketing based blog sites that were targeting SEO traffic. I’ve spoken to people who have lost their entire business and are now going back into the workforce because their sites are now worthless. This made me think hard about how much blind ownership we give big media companies over our bread and butter assets.
As I see my subscriber counts going up on a couple of YouTube channels that I’m trying to grow this year, I feel encouraged. It’s awesome to see people enjoying my content enough to subscribe to my channel and leave comments. Once the dopamine rush of that faded I started to question where is the value in that following? Are they truly my followers?… Well, no, if YouTube killed my channel tomorrow it would sever all contact between me and my subscribers, forever. Much like people I’d seen modelling their businesses around Google rankings, I am building a community on YouTube, and only YouTube. And that community is not mine.
At the same time, I have been feeling lately that I miss writing. Writing is a passion I’ve had since childhood. I once thought about pursuing writing as a career but saw that making it as a creative writer was not realistic for me, and writing content on demand for freelance clients was something I didn’t want to do. So it’s largely just been something I do for passion.
It’s all connected
This is where these two divergent trains of thought suddenly collided and everything made sense. I decided to start a newsletter, and SubStack was the ultimate place to do that. My main reason for choosing SubStack over other writing platforms such as Medium was simple, their whole model is about building a community that you own. If I release a new post it gets sent directly to my followers by email. If one day I want to pack up and move to a different platform, I can take my audience with me and that is crucial in todays world. If attention is the most valuable asset on the Internet, then you need to own the source of that attention.
I’ve found great benefits in getting writing back into my content creation workflow. Writing lets my brain explore things that I can’t otherwise explore and come up with new ideas that unleashes more creativity in my video content creation.
I used to think that I needed to decide between writing or video content as a main focus point. Now I am realizing that it’s all connected. Implementing a solid writing plan in my overall content strategy connects all the dots. I can use my writing to unblock me and come up with creative ideas, those ideas can be distilled into video content. And by publishing my writing as a newsletter I can then use the video content to drive my audience to it and complete the circle 🫶