“Tom, it’s been my lowest performing post yet,” she said.
I felt bad immediately.
I should be the guy showing her how to post.
She should be getting MORE views, not less.
As I berated myself in my head as a writing coach, I saw something that changed this tale from a tragedy to a fairy-tale ending.
You see, this person actually tried something new.
They pushed themselves as a creator.
They made a picture in Canva that blew my mind!
And they posted it to LinkedIn.
In that moment I realized that how we define “success” as a creator needs to change.
Yes,
Views matter
Likes matter
Comments matter
DM’s matter
Sales matter
But,
Experimentation matters
Getting out of our comfort zone matters
Trying matters
Braving the unknown matters
These things matter, too!
Sometimes to get more views, we need to experiment.
We need to see what works and what doesn’t.
And I get it.
Experimenting and failing makes us feel like sh*t.
But understand something:
It’s way harder to discover a NEW form of content that does well than copy the tried-and-true content that came before.
You can be a popular creator but also be creatively bankrupt.
I see it all the time.
Popular writers just copying the work of innovators.
They see that writing about X topic gets views, so all of a sudden they’re interested in X topic and become an expert in X topic overnight.
I have way more respect for the innovators.
The ones who make their own lane.
The ones who take risks.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re successful as a blogger if you:
Experiment
Practice daily
Seek out criticism
Share your darkest stories
Try to help as many people as possible
You’re successful if you do that.
You might’ve noticed I’m talking about mindset more lately.
That’s because mindset is important in writing. Without it, you’ll quit after you publish blog post #2.
We’re walking through a progression of lessons right now designed to take you from blogging novice to blogging expert.
First we covered ideas, and now we’re covering mindset.
We’ll continue to progress our newsletter content as we go.
Thanks for following along. See you this Wednesday.
Welcome to my newsletter, 150 days to blogging mastery. This is the 13th of 150 lessons, which we’ll publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until the end of the year. Please subscribe (above).
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Absolutely agree. Only when we embrace the discomfort is when we will know what we’re truly capable of. Experimenting is challenging, but the failures are successes when they tell us one more truth about ourselves.
Excellent article, I recently got out of my comfort zone, it lead to me writing something that I normally wouldn't have wrote. It is my highest earning Medium article to date, and it pissed off a lot of readers, so I'm stoked.