What if succeeding with our content wasn’t about finding the best tactics, the most effective hook, or choosing the right platform to please the algorithms?
What if the problem wasn’t about doing more but about doing what matters most?
We all want to resonate with our audience
As Experts and Consultants, what do we want? We want fancy cars, vacations in the Bahamas, and a thoughtful reply to the newsletter we sent yesterday. A sign that tells us that our content is making a difference and pulling our ideal audience into our world. It’s just good for business (and also for the soul).
But resonating is hard
While the moment of resonance is beautiful, it doesn’t come every day. We’re up against forces beyond our control, and we tend to get a little impatient when there are no comments on our LinkedIn posts and very few 5-star ratings on our podcast. Resonating is tough. So tough.
When resonating gets hard, what do we do?
- We roll up our sleeves and throw ourselves into the frenzy of AI and Growth Marketing.
- We try different attention-grabbing hooks.
- We add more platforms to our marketing mix.
- We up our repurposing game. We consider launching a podcast, chopping it into 2993 videos, and publishing it everywhere, from LinkedIn to Bluesky.
- We study the copywriting tactics of successful creators.
- We even research the best times to post online and stick to that schedule religiously.
As we do this, an unpleasant feeling starts creeping in.
It feels like we’ve drifted away from our core vision and started catering to the platform instead. Everything is about the platform now – the hooks, the posting schedules, the cover art for YouTube thumbnails.
Is this the game we signed up for?
But hey, the new approach seems to work.
For five whole days, we brute-force our way through, outcompete everyone else, grab some eyeballs, and for a moment, it feels like we’re winning. And then… crickets.
The worst part is that in our quest to resonate more and be more discoverable, we ended up following the same best practices everyone else uses. The recommended formulas. The storytelling structures. The one-size-fits-all approach.
These are the best practices everybody else is using.
Congratulations to us. Now, our content looks like everybody else’s.
Are we solving the wrong problem?
Let’s say you are a baker who makes donuts. 30 days in the business, you realize nobody’s buying the donuts. If you don’t fix this problem, you might have to shut down your bakery. How do you work through this issue?
You have 2 options –
- Open more stores
- Make a donut that tastes darn good
Option 1 one makes sense, right? More stores would help with more distribution.
Of course not.
If no one is buying donuts from a single bakery, what makes you think that opening 20 would make a difference?
This is exactly what we do while fixing our content game. We solve the wrong problem.
Distribution is not the problem. Our copywriting skills? They are just fine. Adding more platforms? That won’t change anything. And yes, our YouTube thumbnail is excellent. The foundational problem? It’s our Point of View.
What is a Point of View?
A simple way to define a POV is the behavior change you want your audience to make. In other words, it’s a belief you want your audience to adopt for their benefit. Something is broken in their world. Your audience is doing things that are bringing them harm… and through your POV, you hope to teach them a better way to do things.
A POV helps us escape the commodity content trap
When we follow the best practices, our uniqueness fails to shine through. But having a POV changes that. A strong POV helps us create signature content… content that looks like us, feels like us, and smells like us. And when that happens, resonance increases multifold.
A POV aligns our content strategy
It acts like the Sun in the Solar System. The Sun represents the singular mission that our brand has. It is the one force that binds all our communication together, preventing it from going in different directions.
Consider Kim Scott’s POV
Kim Scott’s POV (and I am paraphrasing here) – the best leaders and team members achieve outstanding results by creating a culture where people feel personally cared for and directly challenged. It’s opinionated, powerful, and challenges the norm.
Or consider Jonathan Stark’s POV of “Hourly Billing is Nuts,” which immediately grabs the audience’s attention and pulls the audience into his world (podcast, email lists, etc.)
Jay Acunzo’s POV is that “Brands should stop obsessing about reach and focus on getting more resonance.”
To summarize
It’s hard to create content that consistently resonates with the audience. To solve this problem, we try multiple things like fancy hooks, add newer platforms to our marketing mix, and play around with different publishing timings on social media. In the process, we forget a critical ingredient – our own POV.
Once we develop a compelling POV, everything becomes easier. It’s worth investing in uncovering your POV. We do not want to be selling donuts that taste bad.