Who do you make content for?
Between starting a youtube channel and writing more, I’ve been thinking a lot about who I make content for.
I have found that most of what I put out these days can be divided into two types of content:
- Mainstream appeal
- Personal appeal
Putting together content that is aimed at a large group of recipients is great. Articles like my ‘Designing better app icons’ is a good example of this. It’s the type of content that is easily shareable because it brings tangible value that people can objectively approach. It’s hugely rewarding to create content that is consumed by thousands of people. You feel like you’re making an impact.
However, if the content we put online represents our digital persona, there’s a certain one dimensional feeling to the type of content that is easily consumed by the many. A particular type of click-batey title or a narrative structure that best communicates take-away advice. Often it’s washed clean of the imperfections that make up everyday life. Wide appeal means streamlining the content to a degree. Making it digestible. Packaging it for the masses.
Content that has personal appeal is almost the opposite. It is content you create that, to a much larger degree, exposes who you are. Like real life, there isn’t necessarily any neatly structured take-away bullet points. Share-ability is much lower because there is no streamlined wide-appeal. It’s often a uniquely personal account with all of it’s imperfections. It’s content you make for you and for anyone who would be interested in you and your experiences. A good example is my Weekly Reports or the travel videos I’ve been doing lately. This type of content won’t get views in the thousands. The audience is much smaller. The impact a lot less.
Making any sort of content, mainstream or personal, takes time and energy. Now it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that you should focus your energy on content that has mainstream appeal — and indeed, a lot of writers, vloggers, designers, developers & entrepreneurs do exactly that. Cranking out one deliciously quotable SEO-juicy piece of content after another. There’s an allure and a self-reinforcement to the art of continuing to create high-impact content. Why would you ever want to spend time on content you know most people won’t consume?
Picture this: You’re at a party. Everyone is meeting each other for the first time. You weave in and out of clusters of people, listening in on conversations. People are bonding over everything from conservative introductions to tall tales. People are different and have different ways of communicating who they are. Different ways of forging new relationships. As people take turns to get to know each other, you tell the few standing around you a bit about yourself. What do you tell them? How do you tell them?
Now imagine this party is the Internet.
The people around you are people finding your content.
So what are people hearing when they stand next to you at the party?
In my case, they might overhear something like ‘Designing for the Apple TV’. or ‘Let’s talk about white app icons’. This party just got weird.
While I’m proud of my professional achievements none of those pieces of content make for particularly great party talk, if you ask me. More importantly, they’re certainly not very representative of who I am as a person.
The point I’m trying to make is that, for most people you’ll meet on the Internet, you are the sum of content you put out. If you only put out content aimed at a wide audience you run the risk of being the guy or girl at the party who shares interesting walkthroughs, clever dissections of current events or skillful learnings — but very little about yourself.
And indeed, people might stop and listen to you because of your mainstream content. It is after all statistically more likely that those pieces will be their point of entry into your conversation. But maybe after they’ve watched a video of you explaining “How to make better shadows in Photoshop” they’ll stay and find out that you really like flying drones in Thailand. They came for a particularly piece of information, but now they’ve learned something about you. In however little way, you’ve now added a more personal layer to the conversation. That’s a party I’d much rather attend.
This same thinking can be applied to content that your company puts out too. If everything is case-studies and milestone celebrations, what does that really tell the world about you? This is why I love behind-the-scenes videos. It takes a personal approach into an environment that’s predominately designed for mainstream appeal. Sure, more people will watch the flashy case study (we all have them), but a few people will show interest in your more personal content. The first audience will know of you, the second will know you.
Thinking about this duality of content I produce and whom it is for has helped me a lot recently. It has helped me put out better mainstream content and it has helped me make room for low-impact personal pieces. It has helped me understand how connecting those two things create a more nuanced, and frankly human, representation of who I am.
See you at the party.
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Michael is a danish designer, entrepreneur & keynote speaker. he loves making things, going on adventures and telling stories.
