I spend close to 5 minutes every single day going through my social feeds. Most days, it’s even less as I primarily use LinkedIn and Facebook since everything else is just entertainment. At least, that’s how I feel like.
And I know I should be spending more time to promote my ideas, business, and the content I create but I’ll be honest — I don’t think social platforms have any shortage of good content. In fact, there’s a massive gap between the demand, consumption, and production of content. So much so that platforms have begun to regulate it using complex algorithms that we don’t understand.
The result is that there’s an 80-90% chance that your content won’t be seen by your connections. Unless you’ve interacted with them or have engaged with the content they’ve put out recently. For everything else, we have to scroll down the rabbit hole of endless videos, memes, texts, and inspirational quotes only to like, love, celebrate, care, and acknowledge it’s insightful-ness.
It begs the question — is that’s all there is to it? Essentially, content creators are left with no option but to create content every single day till they drop dead or get found, whichever is earlier. And consumers on the other hand need to mentally prepare for endlessly scrolling through the feeds to the bottom… if there’s one?
That’s no way to live a life. There’s got to be a better way. And there is one, it’s just not popular. Here it is:
- Identify your minimum viable audience (MVA)
- Create content just for them
- Everyone else doesn’t have to like it… and even if they do, it doesn’t matter because they’re not part of your MVA. (At least, not as yet.)
I think creating your own private platforms for thoughtful conversations is the future for content creators. Particularly, if you’re creating content to educate and market your primary business. Your roles has to evolve from being a mere creator to being a curator bringing in exclusively vetted out content for your followers. Why? Because there’s simply too much out there and you want to give them the best experience you can.
And creating a simple Facebook or LinkedIn group is a great start. It’s an opportunity for you to build a relationship with the people who’re part of a ‘tribe.’ The sense of belonging and camaraderie is an experience that, ironically, most people miss these days.
The only downside to this idea is that it takes time and effort. You can’t automate it. You need to show up and do the work. So, yeah, it’s hard to scale in a hyper-competitive work like ours. But again, “scale” is a perception. A 100 patrons might be enough for any person to live a comfortable life doing the things they love versus a venture capital-funded start-up. Or the 10,000 “followers” who mindlessly consume the content that you’re putting out.
When it comes to content, I’m convinced that less is more. And all you need is to know who your minimum viable audience is.