Are you sharecropping for attention in the golden age of content creation?
Do you think the cause of your visibility problem is you don’t hustle enough?
While you try to hustle a bit more each day, new social media platforms pop up along with fresh ways to sing for your visibility supper.
If you think that your marketing problem is you can’t produce the right content fast enough or in the format to get the machine gods to favor you with visibility, then that’s all about to change.
I used to think the same until I saw behind the curtain and learned how social media makes us content serfs.
What is content serfdom?
The feudal lords profiting from the sale of attention on their platform need content. The only reason they have attention is because of user-generated content. They are incapable of providing meaningful content. We must till the content fields.
When their fiefdom is attacked, they quickly change the frequency and type of content you need to produce.
When Tik Tok began getting traction with fifteen-second videos, Instagram made reels, and YouTube created shorts to keep users watching. The overlords then tell us we need to produce those videos to get visibility, so we dance to their tune (pun intended).
The manor lords say, “it’s to improve engagement and interest!”
Not for you, but to keep users on their manor. The better your content is on their platform, the less likely a user is to leave.
I know how hard it is not to fall into this trap.
Social media has been a source of connections and customers in the past. Why shouldn’t these platforms be a place to continue to grow readership?
The issue is that these social media platform’s plans co-opt your agenda. They have billions of advertising dollars at stake. Selling other’s attention determines the rules of the game they make us play to earn visibility.
Let’s solve the right problem
The problem isn’t your hustle. It’s that your producing content that serves the manor lords, not your readers.
Create content that your ideal reader wants, and you enjoy creating.
The funny thing about readers is they want to read. They seek to be in the trance state of reading, immersed in the story. When doing so, they show intense focus and the ability to consume books, series, and finally, entire backlists.
Be the king or queen of your castle
Sure, your website is a remote, rarely visited corner of the webverse, but it’s where you have the most control. Put your best content on your plot of land.
When guests come to visit, be a delightful host and help them discover what you offer.
Take the time you were using to make social media content and put it on your platform, emails, and community. You’ll build community faster because the richest content is in your domain.
Tools like artificial intelligence curation and search engines will help to give you visibility and discovery.
Don’t be surprised when you see SEO and content curation tools like ThackStack delivering traffic to your platform. This visibility will be sustainable; as readers find your platform, they will discover what your story world offers.
Join me in leaving the manor to build your content kingdom.
Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses. He is the author of Advantage: Harnessing cumulative advantage in the winner takes all publishing market. You can learn more about building your publishing empire in this golden age of content creation at joesolari.com.
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