I know I’ve been guilty of this on several occasions, and I’ll probably do it again. The first step, of course, is recognizing that this is a problem in the first place. As it turns out, an overwhelming number of content creators — Instgrammers, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and all the rest of it — go about doing this completely backwards too. Some of them go on to achieve great things, most assuredly, but it’s still important to identify this issue so that you can try to avoid falling into the same trap.
Create the Content…
Raise your virtual hand if this sounds familiar. You’re sitting around, perhaps doing nothing in particular, when inspiration strikes for what you think is a great blog post idea. It’s true that you’ll oftentimes come up with your most creative ideas during downtime, when those creative juices can simmer on the back burner, just below the surface of your consciousness.
You quickly whip out your notepad or fire up the note-taking app on your smartphone to jot down your idea. This is gold, Jerry! Gold!
You put together a rough outline of what you want to cover in this blog post, and then the next time you sit down at your computer, you start typing away. You’re feel incredibly inspired and you think that the world will love what you have to say. After putting it through the usual edits and formatting, you publish the post and… crickets.
No one is reading it. The problem is that, like so many other content creators, you went about this process completely backwards. You created the content and now you’re struggling to find an audience for it. This is true of blog posts just as much as it is true for YouTube videos, podcast episodes, or any other form of online content.
But what if you did it the other way around?
Find the Audience…
In that first example, you came up with an idea that you thought was clever or interesting or funny or entertaining or whatever. That’s not inherently bad, except that you’re playing with this idea in relative isolation. It exists in your head for an audience of one: you. If the goal is to reach a broad audience and engage with them, you need to think about content from their perspective.
With this in mind, the alternative route would be to first identify the audience you want to target, and then create content for them. Write the blog posts, shoot the videos, record the podcasts that they want to read, see and hear. There are all sorts of useful tools for overcoming writer’s block, and these come with the added benefit of identifying the topics that the people “out there” are already looking to find.
This might sound obvious. Keyword research, for instance, is a critical component to content planning and content marketing, right? But so many content creators overlook this step frequently, instead creating the content well before figuring out what the audience actually wants.
See or Be Seen?
Put it this way. I know I’ve been guilty of this on several occasions, and I’ll probably do it again. The first step, of course, is recognizing that this is a problem in the first place. As it turns out, an overwhelming number of content creators — Instgrammers, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and all the rest of it — go about doing this completely backwards too. Some of them go on to achieve great things, most assuredly, but it’s still important to identify this issue so that you can try to avoid falling into the same trap.