Why You Need to Start Creating Content
BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front
If you aren’t creating content today, you are missing out on so many opportunities. Work happens differently now that we live in a post pandemic world. Back in the day, you used to have apply to jobs and then hope that someone would take a chance on you. Today, things work differently. We have so many more tools that allow us to show off our skills. We now have leverage and we get to control the narrative. We have the option to be as good (or as bad) as we want. We can become employees, or become our own employers. All of this is possible with an online brand and the most important to creating an online brand is to create content. Let me try to convince you why this is the way to go.
Imposter Syndrome
I want to start with the biggest thing that changed my life. I’ve always been an average person. Through various average actions, I never quite amounted to anything. I got through high school and college with the belief that C’s got degrees. While this served me well during that period of my life, looking back I realize what a horrible mistake I made. During my late teens and throughout my entire 20's, I never got good at anything. I just followed what everyone else did and with a little bit of luck, I got a great career that paid me an average salary for an engineer.
As I entered my 30’s, I realized I wanted to achieve greater things. But, my mind was plagued with imposter syndrome. Since I never really learned any one skill, I always marketed myself as a jack of all trades. But it turns out that I was really just hiding the fact that I wasn’t very skilled at anything. Today, I try to be very good at everything I do.
Creating content helped me remove my imposter syndrome. I’m not going to lie, it took me three years to realize that I just needed to hit record, but that fear caused me to delay creating content. As soon as I got over my fear, I hit the record button and published my first YouTube video. It turns out that doing research for a video, building out examples to teach in your video, adds to your skillset. When you do enough of this, you start getting better. Once you get better, that imposter syndrome slowly starts to go away. I love sharing my learning process, even when I’m wrong, I know that I’ll get better. And I now know that making the mistakes is the only way to get better. I embrace the learning and creation process now and don’t let my ego get in the way. Imposter Syndrome can be tamed, just create content, reflect, iterate, and don’t make the same mistake twice.
Reinforced Learning — Not Theoretical
This next point piggy backs from the last one. Creating content is the only way to start connecting dots. You can spend countless hours (and energy) reading books, taking courses, listening to podcasts. But, it’s not until you actually take action that things get real. You have to practice what you are learning. There is no better way to practice than to document your process. There are billions of people on the internet and someone, somewhere else on this Earth is going through the same thing you are. Simply writing a post, or a tweet on your process can help someone out tremendously. It also helps you out because you are documenting your journey for yourself and you are also improving your skills. When you actually do the exercise, that’s when you start to get fit. You can’t get fit from reading a book on how to do push ups. You actually have to do the push ups. . . . otherwise, you will not see any results.
Building a Brand
Once you start posting, you’ll notice that a small community is going to start to get some interest in the things you are publishing. What’s happening here is that you are starting to build a brand. A brand is a powerful thing to have on the internet. Think of all the popular brands that you know and love today. The loyalty that you have for certain brands. This can happen to you as well. But the only way for people to know who you are is to be in their social media feeds. And the only way to do that is to create content. I’d like to take a second here to point out that content doesn’t all have to be educational. It can be motivational or entertaining. It can be lessons learned, outlooks or predictions. It can be pretty much anything that has the potential to resonate with folks in your niche.
Once you build a brand, making money from your content becomes a lot easier to do. You start creating super fans that will support you emotionally and financially. Assuming you are creating something of value, your fans will help spread the word of your brand, further helping you grow. Eventually, you become known as the go to person in your niche which is a really good thing.
Building a Business
With a brand and a ton of content out there, you now have the ability to start creating a business. What you actually build here is entirely up to you. You can build physical products, digital products, courses, whatever you want. Just make sure that you test things out with your audience to make sure it resonates with them. Having a brand helps you basically build your portfolio. Through this portfolio, folks that need your goods or services can determine if you are a good fit for them. In other words, people come to you, seeking your services. This is completely different than what we are taught which is that you are supposed to apply and go looking for money. With content, a brand, and a business, the money comes to you.
Don’t get me wrong, building a brand and an online business is not easy. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to get something going. But, the return is so much more satisfying. When you have your own business, you are rewarded in proportion to the effort you put in. If starting your own business isn’t your cup of tea, having a brand and content can help you stand out from the crowd. You don’t have to sell goods or services. Instead, you just sell yourself and you abilities. Any future employers looking for someone with your skillset can easily find you because you’ll be all over the internet (in a good way of course =)).
Influence
Finally, when you put content out there, you build influence. Assuming people engage with your content, your opinions may resonate with people. The more content you create, the more impressions you get. The more impressions you get, the higher your influence gets. In previous years, this type of influence was reserved for politicians and celebrities. But, through the power of the internet, anyone can obtain celebrity like influence in their niche.
Conclusion
Hopefully by now, I’ve built a compelling enough reason for you to create content. Being transpererent, the only downside to building content is that it is extremely difficult to please the internet. There’s always going to be some critic that isn’t going to like your stuff. You can’t let that get in your way. Create the content for yourself. For your legacy. I personally create content so that my children and grandchildren get to see how I processed life. I also build the content because I firmly believe that my skills improve with everything that I create. It takes a lot of work and effort. You have to put your ego aside. You have to be willing to accept that people might not agree with you. But it’s all okay. So, go ahead and write that blog post, record that podcast, and edit that YouTube video.
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