One of the biggest regrets as a CTO of 200-people company is getting into content too late.
Content is a perfect tool to grow your career, and more importantly, to grow as a person.
But first — here’s where I started.
I was confused by this word and never took it seriously. Probably like you now.
But it turns out to be simple.
Content is everything that we create. Everything that exists — is the content.
Lines of code, designs, articles, decisions from the calls, demo videos, landing pages, workshops, saas.. It's all the same matter, which I call ‘content’ now.
Content is a product and measure of your work.
If you don’t create content — your hard work is meaningless. Yikes.
There’s no point in content that no one understands.
Read the last line twice.
It’s your job is to present your content to your audience.
Your content is obvious to you, but is difficult for others to get into. The common mistake is to think that the output of your work is easy to understand — it’s not. The people are out of your context and busy with their agendas.
Make you content simple to digest and understand.
eg. don’t share a bare url in your chats — it’s disrespectful to the readers; add a short intro about what the link is about and how it is relevant.
Presentation is the skill. It’s the art, that you have to master. Invest your time in genuine communication.
Change your daily process to prioritize presentation.
Don’t treat distribution as less important activity compared to creation. They go together and equally important.
Optimise your process to create small results daily and immediately present to your audience.
You should have an easy way to communicate with your audience. You should get the real-world feedback on everything you created. That’s how you ensure that you’re moving in the right direction.
Publish often — most of your assumptions will turn out wrong. Validate your content daily to gain clarity and create only what’s needed.
Aim to present everything that you created — otherwise create less, to free some time.
Block focus time in calendar just for distribution. Treat it seriously.
If you follow this process, you’ll get clarity and guidance in your day-to-day life, will grow as a leader and will create larger impact with less efforts.
It’s shocking how many of our activities are unconscious useless rituals from the past, that can be simply eliminated. Don’t do a bullshit job.
Your art doesn’t end on the edge of the canvas
PS
I'm building Momentum — the stupid-simple tool to create and distribute your content.
Great thoughts! This post fully describes my vision
nice
Yes we should reach a audeince some how with our creations and get feedback maybe I could leverage my following on minds to get feed back on my projects
You got it right!
The post about building the following of all kinds —social media, newsletter, waitlists, users etc.
You should absolutely leverage your social media following for products you're building.
Well said. The creative output you release to the market is not emphasized enough. This can help you win the "attention" sale, which is becoming hardest sale of all. I lean on educational based marketing content to help prospects become aware of the solution to an already existing problem. Thanks for the post!
Agree with you 100%, few months ago I tweeted that "education is the best marketing".
Attention is everything. And the information noise becomes louder every year.
Thank you Matt!
Great post. I have never think about content from this angle. Now I am thinking about direction, what content should I produce?
Thanks!
You should just publish what you create daily anyway. (aka Build in Public) Or create educational content about what you learned today.
It takes some time to understand and get into the flow. The best way to get it is to set target to publish daily (in Twitter, IndieHackers, Reddit etc.) no matter what. Then the magic happens and you start noticing small important things.
Here's the best video I found so far on type of content you can produce daily (from Jack Butcher, Visualize Value):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZc5yoYRKuY
And here's the TED Talk about the importance of daily reflection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p329Z8MD0