I’ve written a blog post every week for the past year.
And first and foremost, to each of you that’s taken a few minutes out of your day to read it, thank you, sincerely.
I hope that somewhere along the way there was a couple of sentences that offered you some value or help in whatever you are working on in your career.
Einstein is often credited with the famous quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.
And where I’m proud of sticking true to my word in getting a blog post up every week, sticking with the same strategy and expecting a different reaction is ostensibly not the most intelligent thing to do and so I’m making some changes. More on that later
But before I talk more about that, let me share with you what I’ve learned this past year…
I don’t want to talk about what it takes to write a weekly blog and the practicalities of that, but instead talk about what the outcome has been from sitting down every week and spending to time to give serious deep thought to my life experiences and how I can present them in a way that I hope would be a help for someone else.
1. You never know who’s consuming your content, don’t give up!
I’ve been so surprised by which friends and colleagues told me this past year they read one of my blogs, and to all of you who did it meant the world, thank you.
Just because you only have 3 views on your content, don’t for one second be discouraged and give up. Because when it comes to an audience, in my opinion quality is always more important than quantity.
Followers, likes and views are just vanity metrics as Gary Vaynerchuk will often say. Take pride when you create something that you are proud of and measure success by how well you fulfil your potential.
You will never achieve perfection on your first attempt and in order to create something great, you need to start creating. It’s so easy to get disparaged when after three pieces of work you’re not suddenly a famous, multi-millionaire content creator. This leads on to the second point.
2. Patience is the most valuable asset
They say it takes years to become an overnight success.
My intuition says that this could not be more accurate.
I’m sure of late you’ve seen the multitude of adverts flooding your feeds from professionals who tell you it only takes a few hours to make hundreds of thousands dollars worth of cash.
Now I fully believe that modern technology and the internet in particular has vastly democratised the world of business and what’s more with our current preoccupation with social media the importance of content creation has become hugely aggrandised.
With the unthinkable volume of content being uploaded and shared on a daily basis, in my opinion the only way to stand out is to continually offer work with huge substance behind it.
Every piece of content you create will now be on the internet for the rest of your career. Don’t let that paralyse you and leave you fearful to post anything, just make sure everything you share is something you’d be proud of. How do you that? In my opinion you need to consider the intent behind it.
Sure there will be times when you need to self promote but deep down what were you trying to achieve? If it was purely to line your pockets with a few more dollars maybe you won’t be too proud of that in a few years, but if you were doing it to build your company in order to help people overall in the long run
Pure intent always win. Be in it for the greater good.
Don’t count your views, likes and followers. Substance will always be more important than statistics.
3. If you enjoy what you’re doing and it’s helping someone keep doing it!
I’d forgotten how much I love writing.
What’s more actually taking time to sit down during the week and give sustained focus thought and to get ideas out of my head and on to a page (albeit a digital one) has been a huge personal help this past year.
The fact that maybe one or two sentences this year have been a help for someone else as well is a bonus.
And most importantly I’ve realised I want to help more people on a bigger scale than just this blog.
So this year I started writing a book and I’m just over 40,000 words in so far.
It’s about how you can make better content in order to boost your personal brand or business.
And it complies my decade of varied experience in the content creation industry into a resource that I hope will offer a comprehensive guide for new and aspiring creators and also share elements of best practice for seasoned professionals to consider.
I am not for one second saying my way of content creation is the best and you need to copy it exactly in order to be successful. It is a comprehensive look at the way I create content and if there’s anything in there you feel would be helpful to you I hope that you can utilise for continued success in your own content production.
I am going to continue writing blogs, however until the book is complete they might not be coming out every week.
If you’d like to be kept up to date with information about the book as it’s finished and released you can do so by filling in the form below. Don’t worry it’s not going to be another annoying daily email that fills up your inbox (I doubt it’ll even be one a month).
Please click through on the link below to sign up…
Jack Tompkins
Jack Tompkins Email Formseepurl.com
I wish you every success.
Jack
About Me
I help people, brands and business communicate more effectively with their customers through visual, audio and written content.
I do this through Southpaw Sport, the sports content marketing company I’m currently building as well as on a freelance basis working for agencies and production companies.
You can contact me at jack@jacktompkins.co
Or visit my website www.jacktompkins.co
You can follow Sixty Second Film School on YouTube where we share news, reviews and tutorials for digital filmmakers, all in sixty seconds…
YouTube — www.youtube.com/sixtysecondfilmschool
And my social media for behind the scenes look at what I’m up to
Instagram — @jackwrtompkins
Twitter — @jackwrtompkins