You’re making great content as a blogger, vlogger, podcaster, and whatever kind of internet maker you might be. You know how to capture great ideas, plan and execute content, and generally give the people what they want.
You may not realize this, but you’re probably a writer, too.
Even if you don’t create detailed proposals or write out a word-for-word script, you’re using some vital writing concepts in your work. If you do some form of brainstorming, scheduling, outlining, creating blurbs, marketing, or blogging, yeah… you’re a writer.
So what are those concepts that keep the gears turning behind your content? In this post, we’ll talk about:
- Planning and organizing your content
- Communicating your vision to your collaborators and audience
- Creating experiences with your content
- Infusing your content with the magical ingredient of you
- Making your content professional and coherent
There are many more ways in which writing weaves itself into the act of creating, but these are the few that stand out to me the most.
At the end of this post, you’ll understand how your job as a creator includes the role of being a writer. By being aware of that role and actively stepping into it, you can be more intentional about your writing chops and make your content even better.
Let’s get to it.
Good Content Requires Planning
Something most people don’t think about is how much unseen work goes into a piece of content before it ever reaches an audience. Part of that work is planning.
It doesn’t matter if you’re directing a skit or reviewing the new brunch spot downtown—you don’t start with a perfectly polished product. You have to first determine what you’re making, why you’re doing it, and how you’re going to get it done. You need a plan.
Do you want to make something written, drawn, sung, or as a video? If it’s a video, where will you set up your camera? What shots and angles do you need? What are you going to say? When will you film, edit, and publish the video?
Planning and organizing content is where your writing skills peek out from somewhere deep inside your mind, whether you’re putting together a script or a bulleted list. It’s the first step towards creating something great. It also happens to be the first steps towards writing something great, too.
Remember, your content is for your audience, not for you. It takes time to shape your idea into something that your audience will love. When you don’t plan well, your content can seem unprofessional or scattered to your audience. It might lack direction or usefulness. Take the extra time to plan and mold your ideas into something that serves your audience.
We Want to See Your Vision
Content creators rarely work 100% alone. At some point in the process, you need to communicate your vision to other collaborators like a partner or editor. And most importantly, you need to share your vision with your audience.
Think of a website, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel that you connect with. What about it do you find compelling? Maybe it’s the creator themself (we’ll get to that shortly), but it’s likely that there’s a message or a “why” behind what they share that resonates with you.
That, my friends, is vision.
As a creator, you know what you’re sharing with the world and why. Even if it’s not explicit, there’s something that drives you to make awesome stuff. But if you don’t know how to communicate your “why” to your audience, they may have a hard time connecting with you or your content.
Communication and writing go hand-in-hand. You’re using your writing skills to shape your “why,” your mission, and your community.
You Don’t Just Craft Sentences, But Experiences
As creators, we’re in the business of creating something useful, whether that’s through sharing information the reader didn’t know before, bringing the reader through an emotional journey, or simply being entertaining.
You can be an amazing writer when it comes to the technical details, but fall flat. It takes a deeper level of writing skill to transport your audience somewhere they haven’t been before. It’s not about crafting sentences, but experiences.
When you create a piece of content, you’re stretching out your hand and inviting your audience to go somewhere with you. It’s up to you to decide where that “somewhere” is. In other words, you set the framework for how your audience is changed by your work.
Again, this isn’t something you do by studying grammar rules and plucking through a thesaurus. This is creating a direction and delivering on it by guiding your audience through a journey step-by-step. It’s telling a story. These are skills that we learn as writers, and what you need to explore as a content creator.
Show Off Your Personality
You are the only you to ever exist. When you approach your content from your unique point of view, you show your audience something they haven’t seen before. When you try to exactly follow what other successful creators are doing or hop on the latest trends, it’s harder to stand out and find an audience who connects with you.
Once again, think of a website, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel that you connect with. Now think about the person (or people) behind it. Do you trust this person? Do you like them? Do you feel like you know them? If so, that person has found a way to make their personality show through their content.
It may seem like this wouldn’t be that hard. When I started making YouTube videos in 2014, I imagined how fun it would be to film myself cracking jokes and being my best, bubbly self. Then, I sat on the other end of the camera for the first time and could barely get a sentence out without cutting myself off or losing my train of thought.
Even after I’d started to get the hang of it, I’d be so excited to review my footage only to be so disappointed by how bland I was coming across. Meanwhile, with my friends, I was always finding unique ways to say things and making others laugh. I couldn’t figure out how to be more “me” in my own videos.
It’s the skill of infusing your content with the magical ingredient of you.
Honestly, I still struggle with this, but not nearly as much as I used to. I’ve learned that my personality shines most when I’m bouncing off others and connecting directly with people, even though I’m much more on the introvert side of the scale. So when I’m doing something solo, I have to put in a little more work to seem more myself. This might mean writing a bullet list of the subjects I want to cover so I feel more comfortable going off-the-cuff where it feels right. Or, I might literally write a joke or jump-cut that I perform and eventually edit into something special.
This all sounds counterintuitive, I know, but think of it this way: Even the most seasoned comedians write out their sets. It doesn’t make them any less funny as people; they’re simply capturing moments and pieces of themselves in a way that translates to an audience. And when something doesn’t work like they thought it would, they adapt.
That’s what you want to do with your content—find ways to translate your personality in a way that your audience can read it. Pay attention to the words you use and make sure it sounds like you.
Bad Content is Worse Than No Content
A lot of budding creators envision building a platform with lots of fans and get discouraged when it doesn’t come together right away. You’ve probably heard the saying “if you build it, they will come,” but that isn’t a guarantee. You’re not owed likes, shares, views, or readers just because you made something.
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s a reality check that many creators need.
I don’t say this to discourage you. In fact, I hope you find it liberating. You don’t get seen just because you made something and sent it out into the world. You get seen because you made something with care, you took the time to make it great, and you found ways to share it so that people can find it.
Bad content gets passed over because it’s often unprofessional and incoherent. It’s usually the first draft or version of an idea. It has some good potential, but it doesn’t succeed in what it sets out to do (or it has no direction at all). It’s clearly made for the creator and not with an audience in mind.
Where does writing come in? You need to know how to communicate your ideas and execute them well. You need to write or speak well enough to get your point across. If your video babbles aimlessly or your blog post is riddled with typos and grammatical errors, your audience gets the feeling that you didn’t put much time or thought into your work. So why should they put time or thought into consuming it?
Bad content sucks. Capture great ideas, plan out your content, gather feedback from real people in your intended audience, and put some effort into the execution and editing.
I’m a strong believer that all content creators are writers on some level. Great ideas don’t stand on their own, and it takes writing skills to craft your content in a way that’s valuable, unique, and takes your audience on a journey.
I’d love to know what you think. Let me know in the comments or take the conversation to Twitter.