but otherwise, it’s OK to write about what excites you, and to do it as you learn.” yeah, but what if no one else cares what you write about or it does not gain traction
Not everyone cares about that.
Some notes on influenceering
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Re: Some notes on influenceering
#22but otherwise, it’s OK to write about what excites you, and to do it as you learn.” yeah, but what if no one else cares what you write about or it does not gain traction
So what? You care. That's what matters.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#23> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
Yeap, just +1'ing this too.
One other axis of engagement is "topical relevance" -- and I think that does have some overlap with the axis of "effort put in". Meaning: putting a TON of effort into a long-form piece tends to relate to some original thought or framing you have. But a lot of people are explicitly looking for something, even if that something is an entertaining throwaway meme comment.
If you go too heavily down the "flesh out topic of deep personal interest", you can end up too far away from the "topic everyone wants to talk about on the internet today" stuff.
Sadly (or not!), I take great enjoyment fleshing out topics of deep personal interest, even when they have limited relevance to the topic du jour. If it were different, perhaps we'd be journalists or more mainstream authors.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#24> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
+1 - I've spent months on some videos—research, testing, sometimes travelling to different places to get better data and video to use. Then I spend a few hours on others. Some of the 'big' ones do well, sure, but it's nowhere near proportional to the amount of time worked.
I still do those projects because personally I don't feel like I'm doing as much good when I whip up a video in less than a day from concept to posting. I try to at least have something interesting/educational in each video, even if it's just a Gist or a new GitHub project someone can fork.
That extra work doesn't result in any extra reward/revenue, but at least it keeps me motivated.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#25Can relate to a lot of this as a very small content creator that has been doing it for fun for over 10 years. On online weirdos - this is very much a thing. You can pick up weirdly persistent stalkers and haters and it can be exhausting and sometimes scary. For me, I do it for fun. I find it very frustrating to have conversations with followers/viewers that are wanting me to do $thing and why don't I open subs to $mo…
+1 - I picked up my first semi-stalker / email harasser recently from blogging and sending out a newsletter about apps I build and open-source. Pretty weird experience.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#26The best thing I've learned about "influenceering" is to stop thinking you're hot shit and focus on being useful (or entertaining if that is what you're about). Years ago I was pumping content out all the time and I was just creating the content for the sake of creating it. Consequently, the content was mostly pointless and garbage. If you want to treat your social media as a public journal that is cool, but not like…
This is helpful - thank you for sharing. I've been down a mental rabbit hole lately and reached similar conclusions.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#27The best thing I've learned about "influenceering" is to stop thinking you're hot shit and focus on being useful (or entertaining if that is what you're about). Years ago I was pumping content out all the time and I was just creating the content for the sake of creating it. Consequently, the content was mostly pointless and garbage. If you want to treat your social media as a public journal that is cool, but not like…
This is helpful - thank you for sharing. I've been down a mental rabbit hole lately and reached similar conclusions.
And, for what it's worth, I also share because I love building things and learning. I taught myself how to code using free resources online, so it felt perfectly natural to publish and open-source everything I figured out.
I also wouldn't mind eventually making some money off delivering reliable value to others.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#28> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
My experience on the internet suggests that high-signal information usually has very low memetic fitness. All the good sources of information I've found have been buried away and I've come across them serendipitously. Not particularly surprising though, entertainment is the lowest common denominator so it's much easier for that kind of stuff to spread. High-signal information is the complete opposite: very few people…
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Re: Some notes on influenceering
#29> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
Doesn't this kind of make sense? Stuff with high personal resonance, by virtue of being personal, has a specific audience. That sounds trite, but I at least tend to underrate how much the stuff I really like is just a weirdly shaped key fitting into a weirdly shaped lock somewhere in my brain.
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Re: Some notes on influenceering
#30> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
It’s what I call the comedians valley. Naturally funny people are off the cuff and effortless. If they try stand up it takes a long time to marry up elite performance professionalism with natural talent. For a long time there’s an uncanny awkwardness to it. The same thing is goes for other forms of memetic influence