How to Pivot Your Writing Business

Why you need one place for your business content

Leonardo.ai propmpt >> A man sitting at his desk looking out a window at the ocean. The image is hyper realistic. The window is as high as his desk. A tall plant sits on the floor near the desk.

When I started writing on Medium I had not honed an identity yet. I had not yet found what I wanted to write about. I felt then — as I do now — that the identity would be created through a process. My business/writing identity would be created by the act and action of writing what I wanted to write about in short.

So when I started on Medium I began by writing about Mindfulness and Meditation and concepts around identity. I wrote about different yogic breathing techniques and I also started writing about nature. These are things I was and am passionate about. I cannot begin to tell you how meditation and awareness has helped me develop as a person. And nature? Well, who doesn’t love a good walk in the woods.

At this time I also started two Medium publications. Chatoyant and My Emily Dickinson. Chatoyant was going to cover my art writing, while My Emily Dickinson was going to be a personal exploration of her poetry. I thought Emily Dickinson would be a sufficiently odd topic that over time my writing may become known over time. Pipe dream. Quixotic. Absurd.

Early Success

At the same time I started those focused publications I also started finding what was going to be successful. After three months on Medium I started to get more than just a few reads.

My first post that gained real attention was on Rust programming. It was a basic “Why you should Learn Rust” titled piece, and it gained a large number of reads for me. I found one topic I could write about now, Rust programming. I’m not an expert in Rust programming and to really dig into a programming language and write content around that it would be necessary to also become more of a programmer myself. Though I did work as a front-end developer at Microsoft and other places learning the depths of Rust and writing around that was not a great option.

My second successful post was on the American Chestnut tree. That is something I could dig into. I did write a selection of writing on America trees and other nature topics. I have a series of writings on State Trees.

Those two pieces were published in late October and Early November. This was also the time of Crypto and personal finance writing gained a large following on Medium. I participated in that too. My reads continue to remain steady, but not explosive.

Leonardo.ai prompt >> A man is sitting at his desk looking out a window at the ocean. The image is hyper-realistic. The window is as high as his desk. A tall plant sits on the floor near the desk.

Why you need Focus

Cutting to the chase now.

It is easier to grow an audience when they know what you will give them.

Being successful on Medium comes when you have focus. Your email subscribers want to read your content, but they don’t want it all over the place. If you are writing on personal finance posting on art or sports is a distraction — unless you can tie that sports content to your personal finance writing.

It will confuse your audience if you attempt to produce many kinds of content in one place. If you are a talking head on tv who covers politics if you start making jokes during your opening monologue nobody will take you seriously, unless you maintain that stance throughout your show.

The reason I ended my two publications on Medium were they did not fit my current or future needs on Medium. I have preserved the content, but it does not belong here.

I realized that if I am using Medium to write about my business then I should keep the more personal projects someplace else.

So I ended those two publications last night. The content has been moved to my Emily Dickinson website, and to my Substack.

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