Pick Your Audience, Pick Your Future: How to Define Quality Content
Sitting on a stage to talk to some marketers (as Hollywood writers do from time to time), Aaron Sorkin once said the following:
"If you prepared beef the way that you are sure would appeal to the most people, it would be a McDonald's hamburger every time, [but] I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like, and then I keep my fingers crossed that enough other people like it that I get to keep doing it."
Sitting in his apartment in New York City talking to me for my podcast (as internet writers do from time to time), Tim Urban once said the following:
"Calling it 'content' really takes the fun and the art and the joy out of writing [...] I try to write for a stadium of Tims."
Sitting alone in my office talking to myself (as I do from time to time), I just now, before this writing, said the following:
"I don't know what to write for the 95th edition of the newsletter, so maybe I'll just write about what I like."
And what I like right now ... is you. So I thought I'd write about you, or rather, write about the notion of audience. Because I like my audience. I like you.
"Aw," right? I know. We're adorable together.
What I like about you is you like what I like, and you like to feel the way I like to feel. If you don't, you wouldn't be here for more than one or two emails. (And if you're new here, well... give me a shot. But also, after I take my shot, walk away if you don't like it. I'm not gonna change.)
I like my audience because my audience not only likes me, they are like me. (Read it again. It makes sense. I promise.)
It's not that you like me. It's that you're like me.
I like what I like, and so I think before I write, I'll write about that stuff.
I also like feeling the way I like feeling, so I think before I write or promote what I write, I'll ensure I feel that stuff.
If I don't like it, or I don't how it makes me feel, I won't do it -- even if it's supposedly "what works."
But lately, I'm having more and more conversations with creators who dislike their own audiences. And why? Because all they pursue is "what works."
* * *
I think the way you package and position your work publicly should create "useful friction."
Marketers love to talk about decreasing friction, and sure, if someone is exactly the right type of person you want to serve, make it abundantly clear how they can take action after entering your atmosphere -- and make it breathtakingly easy too. But what shouldn't be the case is that everyone who enters your atmosphere and takes a breath is able to breathe.
"Want to be part of this world?" (good work says to the audience) "You gotta breathe what I breathe."
I breathe creativity, craft, and story, at least professionally. (More personally, I'd say I breathe Italian food, basketball, and rolling on the floor with my kids. Also oxygen.)
Because I breathe that (professional) stuff, if you enter my atmosphere and can't tolerate it, you'll suffocate. You'll immediately leave. What I want isn't for everyone to survive or thrive in this little world I'm building. What I want is for the right people -- for YOU -- to take one quick inhale and go, "Ahh, that's the stuff! I like it here."
I've created useful friction. I've created an atmosphere capable of sustaining life, but not ALL life -- just those who breathe what I breathe.
For instance, I could position the newly-launched Creator Kitchen as a means to "10x your audience growth." But instead, Melanie and I talk about things like "pushing yourself creatively" and experiencing "creative momentum." We built a membership around the idea of personal creative growth. By being loud and proud about that, it creates some useful friction. We know phrases like that won't appeal to the people who first need to see "big business results" being offered. The Kitchen -- and most especially, the Kitchen's home page -- only appeals to those who already understand why they should care about personal creative growth.
"The Kitchen is a membership for quality-obsessed creators to experience consistent creative growth." Honest. Pure. No walking back what we want or believe. That type of "useful friction" that straightens the funnel, if you need some marketing jargon to understand -- which you don't. Because you are here. Breathing this damn-refreshing air with me.
Ask yourself:
How do I straighten my marketing funnel, not just expand it?
Do I practice "what works" or do I create what I like?
Am I obsessing over reach at the expense of resonance?
Am I leading with my beliefs and my personal perspective loudly and proudly, or do I walk back on what I truly care about?
How can you create more useful friction?
The reason some creator friends of mine are telling me they dislike their own audiences is because they're doing whatever it takes, or what someone else said it takes, to grow. They followed some generalized sense of what they should create instead of their own sense.
When you blindly pursue "what works," obsessing over reach, you might not like who comes your way. It's easy to grumble about the audience sizes of people whose content you dislike, but you wouldn't WANT that audience to begin with, would you? The people who respond positively to that stuff are probably not the people you would enjoy serving. They don't like what you like. They like... that other junk.
There are more popular ways of doing the work that I do, but I am trying to help a specific group of people in a specific way. More so, I am trying to create things I wish existed. Things I like that make me feel the way I like feeling.
What we create has consequences. Do you like what you create? Do you like who comes your way? The calculus isn't too complex:
Pick your audience. Pick your future.
* * *
Let's talk about how this works in our actual daily lives. This is about defining what quality means in your specific situation.
Quality is contextual. You and I can disagree about the quality of a piece or project (or shirt or cuisine or city or basketball player or song or anything). Quality is in the eye of the beholder. It's contextual.
So learn to contextualize it.
To do so, we can ask three questions and adopt two habits.
To define quality, ask three questions:
Who is it for? What is it for? How will I know if it's working?
This is useful when you work with others, aligning your boss, teammates, clients, or other stakeholders. But this is also useful to stay focused yourself, grabbing control of your inner narrator who might otherwise lose sight of what you're trying to create -- or worse, invite some maker monsters into your day, like imposter syndrome and scope creep and writer's block.
No thank you.
So let's ask:
Who is it for? It can't be for everyone.
We might need to define the demographics of an audience. We definitely need to define the psychographics.
What are their shared values and beliefs? What are their current struggles and challenges? What goals do they have?
What is it for? It can't be for everything.
The work must have a purpose for others, not just for us. "Self-expression" and "improvement" are the defining characteristics of a personal practice, but if we want to move others, we have to take into account how they're already moving.
What are they doing which needs fixing or enhancing?
What problems do they have?
How are they already trying to solve those problems, and why isn't that sufficient?
What vision do we have for something better, which comes through in our content?
The single-biggest reason content fails is because it's trying to solve our problems, not the audience's. So what is it for ... for them?
Then ask once more, with a different twist: What is it for ... for me?
If we first address the audience's needs, then it's the right time to ask ourselves how we fit into the equation.
What's it for -- for them? What's it for -- for you? Write out one sentence for each.
And finally...
How will you know if it's working? Look for signal, not final success.
If it's a test, if it's new, if it's creative, we aren't looking for that big number or outcome. We're not looking for "growth." We're looking for a sign that what we've created is growable. Substitute "growth" for any objective as you prefer.
Early on, we just need justification that we should invest more confidently and consistently in the thing. Imagine being on a beach with a metal detector, looking for buried treasure. You can dig a million holes all over the place or arbitrarily pick a spot and dig deep, but either approach seems wasteful and risky. Instead of "finding treasure," our first step is "hearing beeps." We just need to hear some beeps, some response from the audience that what we like is what they like too. That's signal we've found the others, the right people to serve. So then we dig. We invest more time, energy, and resources there.
Solve for resonance first. Worry about reach later, if at all.
No signal? No beep? Stop right there. Now it's a judgment call, using your intuition to guide you. Did your work fail to resonate because you've yet to find the others? Did you fail to articulate your ideas in a way that could resonate, so the right people "get" what you get? DON'T kill the work just yet. If you feel in your bones it's the right idea, pursue it, but tweak the way you explain it so others see what you see -- or change where you show up to find those who already do.
Who is it for? What is it for? How will you know if it's working?
Ask those three questions to define quality.
Then, adopt two habits: practice your craft and engage with your audience.
Practice your craft: Have a personal project where you ship and explore and test and tinker purely for your own benefits, without caring about metrics. It can be 10 minutes a week, every week, but it has to persist. That's the practice: repetition, reflection, reinvention, over time.
Engage with your audience: Participate before you promote. Actually actively participate in your community. Add value before you expect any in return -- and all the other popular maxims that sound like "talk to your audience." But more so, understand their pain and problems. Don't ask for ideas. That's your job. You're the visionary, the leader, the maker of things that move others. Instead, ask what's broken and what they've tried to do to fix it. Then judge for yourself whether there's something better you can offer. They might tell you what they want, but as a leader, you should figure out what they need.
If you know...
Who it's for
What it's for
How you'll tell if it's working
...and you regularly...
Practice your craft
Engage with your audience
Then you'll almost certainly understand what quality means. You'll almost certainly create a situation where you can create what you like, the way you like it. Because if you don't like the answers to those questions or who you're meeting when you engage with your audience, then I'm begging you: pick a different audience.
Don't do "what works." Do what you like. Because you have to live with the audience you get.
Content has consequences.
Pick your audience. Pick your future.