I’ve been deeply enmeshed in the world of content for months now. Video, photo, audio—writing, shortform, longform—swinging across social media platforms like a young Tarzan from tree to tree. I’ve been in the weeds.
The rules of engagement have really changed in the past one year. Especially on LinkedIn. Before, it was enough to post once a week. People were going to read your post and enjoy it. Then the new thing was to post everyday, at the same time. It worked until everybody started doing it.
Lately, it seemed that no matter how good your post was, the chances of it receiving good engagement were very low. It was discouraging but there wasn’t much choice but to keep testing and finding a way forward. I kept writing, kept creating.
Effervescent Writing
Content has always been relatively easy for me because I’m quite talented at it. I witness mundane moments and am able to spin them into a meaningful stories, into edible content.
This allowed me to ditch my ‘content strategy’ (the content calendar, content scheduling, etc) and just post sometimes. No agenda, just boom. Sometimes, those posts did very well. Other times, they tanked. I didn’t care; I had felt the inspiration to write and just yielded to it. I started to copy those posts that came via inspiration and schedule them along with the other ‘premeditated’ posts. (I put the word ‘premeditated’ in quotes because everything I write is by inspiration—what varies is the degree of urgency each spark comes with.)
The 3:00am spark
Yesterday, I had the idea for a post at 3:00am while I was moseying around on my laptop, too tired to do anything too strenuous, but eager enough to browse LinkedIn.
On there, I was scrolling through the timeline and then pop!—inspiration. I opened the LinkedIn editor tab and began to download the divine blueprint in my mind, to mold it into words. I was done in about seven minutes. Splendid! I gazed with delight at my handiwork. The weeks of editing with Claude had paid off; I was able to cut out my excess meandering, and land the post neatly.
It was a post about a new feature by Spotify and how it’s affecting the podcasting world. I very narrow lane to comment on, but inspiration had given me something notable to say, so I said it. I did not expect it to do well. Especially not at 3:00am.
I hit post, and deftly copied the text into my content scheduling app. “You will not waste; you will see the light of day again another day”, I said to my dear lively piece, pairing it with a photo for its future iteration. And then I went to bed.
Two thousand first impressions
I woke up this morning and whoa!—this hyper-specific industry take from me had done excellent well! Over two thousands impressions, four comments, and 12 likes. Four comments? Who were these people, and what were they saying? Was this post really that good?
I checked. The readers had indeed read through the post and understood it’s real message. It wasn’t about podcasting or Spotify updates. It was about building intentionally for the long term, with authenticity and a focus on purpose. That is my lane. Podcasting and the Spotify feature were just the aperture through which I was seeing and speaking on this occasion. I was delighted to see that the principles of content that I had discovered were right—if you speak sincerely about what you know, and write thoughtfully, people will get it. No matter what it is you are talking about.
If you write thoughtfully about your own experience, people will get it—no matter what you are actually talking about.
The clincher
What shocked me the most, though, was the calibre of commenters. One would think the people who would resonate with such a post would be professionals in the podcast industry.
Nay, not a one.
They were from tech and/or core Science industries. How in goodness name did they see or desire to read, understand, and then feel drawn to comment on this post? One’s title was “Senior Scientist | Biotechnology”. Another was “Principal Product Engineer | Semiconductor Industry”(this person actually reposted the post)! A third was “Senior Director, Product Engineering”
Huh?
Marvellous findings. I think it’s true—we must keep on showing up, even when it feels bleak. We should trust the audience to find meaning in anything we put meaning into.
Why is this a win?
As a writer and career strategist, creating content that resonates is the goal. My hope is that some of these impressions (which are now over 3,000) will lead to a few profile visitors, a few follows, and a few conversations. This is the visibility game—get discovered by an ideal prospect, attract them to your dialed-in profile and then watch an opportunity come to life. It is a bit of a long shot, but it’s really the strategy for digital solopreneurs who are ambiguous in nature.
PS: you can read the LinkedIn post here.