The Week of Checking my Privilege

I bit off more than I could chew. I am pretty sure you figured that out already. I took a big bite. My jaw has unhinged itself and I stand, befuddled, like a glimmering Pikachu in the wild. What happens when a longform writer tries to imitate social media content practices? This happens 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

I am overwhelmed. My work. The messages. The calls. The WhatsApp. Oh! the WhatsApp. My phone screen time has jumped from around half an hour to around six hours. I finally understand why people complain about social media. My learning systems are flopping. The productivity has hit an all-time low. Also, I discovered how lucky I have been with my career as a creator in this modern content ecosystem.

The privilege of having the recommendations I did when I started out...

The privilege of a disapproving but a non disruptive family...

The privilege of community...

The privilege of access to people willing to teach and learn...

In the posts that are coming within 12 hours of this newsletter being published, I will be talking about things that will probably come from this place of privilege. I just want you to know that I realise how lucky I have been (and still am to some extent).

On to the poll: this shower thought was actually a valid question. The writing tip hidden in this question is this:

When writing a story, you want your readers to figure things out. You want them to experience the thrill of discovery. The easiest way to do that is to explain your fiction as a fact and then have the readers put two and two together.

To everyone who voted and contributed to the discussion, thank you for agreeing with me in saying this - A lot of fiction is based on something factual.

On to the notes, Team LinkedIn simply outdid itself. Members from LiCAP USA, Ankur Warikoo, and so many others conducted these amazing, informative sessions for us. You can learn from the notes. The amount of value dropping this week was just phenomenal.

1.

1. Failure is a dataset. See failure as data.
2. Telling instead of selling. 
3. Ask and then answer the top 10 questions of your industry. 
4. People care about the outcome and not the process. 
5. Write your content with a goal in your mind. 
6. Assume people don’t care. Make them care. 
7. Proactively think what’s next.
8. Don’t worry about being polished on LinkedIn.
9. Let content creation be an integration and not an interruption in your life.
10. Test out content styles and strategies. Share your testing results. Success and failure or no change are all data points.
11. Tell is greater than sell. Talk about what you do. That will be your lead magnet (rather than reminding people of clicking on your links).
12. Find parts of your story that resonate with more people.         

2.

1. If success doesn’t excite you, you might want to reanalyse things
2. Follow suggestions which have merit (someone commented on his camera presence).
3. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. So ASK.
4. Ask LinkedIn for help directly instead of playing the guessing game.
5. Put names to things - it brands you - it makes people associate to you and your brand.
6. Don’t think of content creation as a creative process.
7. Making yourself consistent is the best way to get the algorithm to love you and trust you.
8. Think of what’s in it for the platforms.
9. Weekly business review (like Bezos from Amazon) - do this for yourself every week.
10. You cannot be consistent with what you don’t like.
11. We are shit scared of failure as Indians.
12. How to grab attention?
    - Why are you creating content
    - Who are you creating this content for (prepare a Specific User Persona)
       eg.: LinkedIn (Entrepreneur/Leader), Instagram (Friend)
    - What kind of content do these personas like? Be as specific as you can.
13. When hiring, look for people who have a similar worldview. 
14. Repurposing content:
    - Don’t create time sensitive content
    - Create evergreen content (you are not a news channel)
    - Really old, quality content will work a year later because it will be new to your newer audience.
15. Try making a Product management style user persona to define and then create for your niche audience.
16. Don’t diss yourself before the world has dissed you.
17. Common sense is just experience. Share your common sense with your network.
18. Use your own moral compass to determine what’s right for you and your network.
19. Specific, niche followers are the best kind of followers to have.
20. Always emphasize on community. Take care of your value proposition.
21. Think of your content as a product.
22. Niched content has lower engagement. .        

3.

1. Community comes via content
2. Three questions to ask yourself:
    - What do I want to be known for?
    - What value can I add for others?
    - What do I want this community to do?
3. How can I help people? Can I serve?
4. Build the community with a clear purpose.
5. Get people talking:
    - own what you know (find your niche)
    - can you get people to talk
    - make people feel like they aren’t alone
    - join timely conversations (try to extend them)
    - what do I (and people) care about and have a perspective on
6. Community building isn’t a broadcast.  It is a conversation.
7. Remind people to keep asking questions.
8. Numbers are a signpost and not a goalpost.
9. Focus on ways in which people can find you.
10. When it comes to overlapping communities, look for the overlap - strategy will help.
11. Seed new ideas into your network. Gently.
12. Try to get as close to in-person conversations as possible..        

Hope this was as insightful for you as it was for me.

See the videos if you missed out on the videos from the first series where I did a basic overview, you can find them here:

1. Writing is easy if you put that creative expression on a schedule.

2. Find your productivity and creativity systems.

3. Make it manageable.

4. Figure out and fine tune your big idea.

5. Outlining and sequencing (or no) – knowing where you are going.

6. Intention and Obstacle

7. Jot down your Research

8. Edit like a reader.

9. What happens next

10. Persevere

Find my posts for LiCAP by scrolling through (and following) my project hashtag #TheWritingCatalogue. If you are writing a book or planning to write a book, feel free to reach out regarding anything.

All the insightful creator accelerator content can be found under #LICreatorAccelerator.

Ending this one on the note of going deep. ⏰12 hours⏰

See you next week 👋🏾.

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