Content creation?

[Ahmed Elakkad]

So, I'm an Engineering student, and I have no idea about marketing whatsoever. I've decided to learn marketing because we live in an attention economy. I started learning Digital Marketing specifically. I'm currently doing the "Udacity Nanodegree" it's a good course so far, but I keep asking myself how do I create content?

In the course I'm learning stuff like how my content should be personalized, the length of the content, the language of the content, voice and tone, and using memory emotion and motivation. How I should be starting with Why How What, not What How then why.
I'm also learning about story telling and the core elements of the story, but I'm currently learning how to distribute content.

Yet again I'm asking myself how do I create content? Should I learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create a website? Should I also be learning things like Adobe after effects? I don't know what to do. I don't even have a product or a service yet. If you were in my position what would you do?

Thank you all in advance.

 

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[Anon3x156]

Why you want to create content? What are you looking to gain from content creation?

You said you're learning about marketing but you also said you don't even have a product or a service yet.

Becoming *something* on social media is not so easy takes a considerable amount of time for most people and if you don't have a "why" which is strong enough, you will most likely quit before even gaining any success.

 

[BigRomeDawg]

What are your goals?

 

[Ahmed Elakkad]

You said you're learning about marketing but you also said you don't even have a product or a service yet.

Becoming *something* on social media is not so easy takes a considerable amount of time for most people and if you don't have a "why" which is strong enough, you will most likely quit before even gaining any success.

What are your goals?

Well, the main goal for me is to learn how to harness attention. I'd like to have the power of scaling anything and everything I do.

 

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[Ahmed Elakkad]

Why you want to create content? What are you looking to gain from content creation?

You said you're learning about marketing but you also said you don't even have a product or a service yet.

Becoming *something* on social media is not so easy takes a considerable amount of time for most people and if you don't have a "why" which is strong enough, you will most likely quit before even gaining any success.

It's never easy to do anything anyway. I have plenty of time on my hands. I don't know whether learning marketing is the right move or not, but I can't standing still not doing anything.

 

[Anon3x156]

Well,the main goal for me is to learn how to harness attention. I'd to have the power of scaling anything and everything I do.

first of all, you can't "scale everything you do" with a YouTube channel, or with any kind of social media account.

for example, if you have a YouTube channel that is about soccer, you can't promote your sanitary pad brand there.
even if you did, you wouldn't get the best results.

that's why you have to have your goals and whys in your mind.

you want to start a company that sells drones? consider starting a YouTube channel about drones.

 

[BigRomeDawg]

Well,the main goal for me is to learn how to harness attention. I'd to have the power of scaling anything and everything I do.

That's a great skill to have... but what are your high level life/business goals? Like why do you care to harness attention?

 

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[Ahmed Elakkad]

That's a great skill to have... but what are your high level life/business goals? Like why do you care to harness attention?

To be completely frank, I know that the "wealth" Equation is "Magnitude" multiplied by "Scale". Scale is one of the 5 business commandments. So I figured, I'm learning Engineering which makes the barrier of entry hard to whatever I'm going to do next. Need, Time, and Control depends on what I'm going to do. Scale however is unknown to me. Feedback and attention are the most important elements of a business in my opinion. I genuinely believe that we are living in an attention economy.
I still need to figure out how do I create content. It's fine though. I'm glad that I found this forum.

Thank you for showing interest in this topic, seriously.

 

[fastlane_dad]

Yet again I'm asking myself how do I create content? Should I learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create a website? Should I also be learning things like Adobe after effects? I don't know what to do. I don't even have a product or a service yet. If you were in my position what would you do?

This post is confusing. What kind of content would you like to put out? Written form? Podcasts? Video? Options are endless. You don't need a 'product or service' to attract attention online. BUT you do need to provide entertainment OR education. Which one would you be better at? Have you tried making ANY content yet?

You can start a youtube channel on a topic of your choice. Perhaps a blog. Or start doing tik-tok dances. You don't need to do a deep dive into programming skills.

Are there any topics that interest you that you think you can provide value in? Any hobbies? Anything you can share with an audience? You are a click away from uploading a video to YouTube.

That's more so along the lines of which I'd be thinking in rather then looking to learn HTML.

 

[Antifragile]

I think we all need more content from people with zero experience.

Why?

Because they want to learn to “scale anything”.

 

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[Ahmed Elakkad]

This post is confusing. What kind of content would you like to put out? Written form? Podcasts? Video? Options are endless. You don't need a 'product or service' to attract attention online. BUT you do need to provide entertainment OR education. Which one would you be better at? Have you tried making ANY content yet?

You can start a youtube channel on a topic of your choice. Perhaps a blog. Or start doing tik-tok dances. You don't need to do a deep dive into programming skills.

Are there any topics that interest you that you think you can provide value in? Any hobbies? Anything you can share with an audience? You are a click away from uploading a video to YouTube.

That's more so along the lines of which I'd be thinking in rather then looking to learn HTML.

It's quite apparent that I've started asking questions too early. I'll get more educated on the topic, and I'll start executing soon then I'll write back. I'm honored that you replied to me, you were the first person I followed on this forum.

 

[Antifragile]

It's quite apparent that I've started asking questions too early.

Not too early at all. In fact, perhaps it’s perfect timing for you.

I hope you get the message. Your approach is in reverse from what it should be. Instead of focusing on “oh this thing is driving me nuts, how do I fix it” and then monetizing that product / service. You are working on a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

It’s a good think you are learning marketing. It’s an amazingly useful skill. And whether course you are taking should start with:
1/ to sell a product - know what problem it’s solving.

Creating content for the sake of creating content is like practicing your public speaking skills with your mouth shut, and alone, and in the dark… useless.

Best of luck.

 

[Shono]

I think we all need more content from people with zero experience.

Why?

Because they want to learn to “scale anything”.

I agree, people with zero experience are also ones that might be more innovative to develop new things

 

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[techvx]

I may be (extremely) biased in a not-so-positive direction when it comes to this topic, in part because my brain still has a bit of trouble figuring out how is it, exactly, that a bunch of seemingly bright and capable folk have gone ever so slightly off the rails into a never-ending series of pontifications about subjects, completely disconnected from anything that could even remotely be considered genuinely useful, helpful, and beneficial to the end recipients. Yet here are my two cents.

Warning: strong language, emotionally charged opinion. Keep reading at your own peril.

-

1) There's no such thing as a "content". The dictionary definition points out to the linguistic heritage, defined by:

[Middle English, from Medieval Latin contentum, neuter past participle of Latin continēre, to contain; see contain.]

The "content" is what you can see inside your bowl of cereal in the morning. The "content" is the heap of clothes, stuffed inside your cupboard. The "content" is that which is contained, in a clearly delimited container, of a specific shape, created for a specific purpose. I genuinely don't understand how the hell did this term came to be used in a corporatized, lifeless, completely devoid of any meaningful essence, setting of the modern trendy business-y jargon.

Perhaps because there's no need to pay anyone a few cents too many if all they're doing for you is "producing content" that only the Google crawler will ever give a **** about? It still eludes me, truly - up to this day.

-

2) No one gave a heck, gives a heck, and will ever give a heck about any "content" that you'll ever produce. People don't go online looking for "content" to consume. Businesses are not built on "content". No one derives any value, any benefit, from any kind of a f* "content". People have problems to solve, and they have aspirations to fulfill. Period. Full stop.

Some of those are physical (a taxing illness - or a desire to get in shape, get noticed by the opposite sex, find the "one true love" or screw around with twice as many girls as the chad from your local circle of "buddies"), some are emotional (a gnawing sense of meaninglessness, boredom, pain - or a longing for the sense of peace and harmony with the world).

In business setting, people have intellectual demands (having too much information to process, too many risks to account for, too many unknown variables in the mix - or a desire to gain an upper-hand of a "genius entrepreneur" that will spot opportunities left and right, leaving the "competition" behind). A subset of those are "tactical" needs (how do I stop losing money on Google Ads - and how do I make the TikTok my b**** that will generate me a ton of leads for free).

"Content creators" is just an amorphous blob of a term that mixes together people that have nothing to do with each other at all: the clowns/entertainers, and the educators/teachers. Sure, it's a spectrum. Sure, Mr. Beast has, without a doubt, taught a whole lot of teenage boys about the value of persistence, and a whole lot more about the fact that they don't have to strive for the level of Elon Musk if they want to claim that they've "made it". Sure, you can be somewhere in the middle. No one will ever pay you for the "content" that you create, though - only for what it will do for others.

Which leads right into the next point.

-

3) No amount of "content creation" will get you anywhere if you don't have any purpose behind it. Marketing is a tool - used to draw people's attention to the value of the service that you're able to provide. If you don't have any value, if there's no service provided, if your ability to get people from their horrid state A (for "agony") to the desired state E (for "ecstasy") is below zero, no amount of learning about any "content" strategies and methods will move the needle.

If you're just starting out, your focus should be on turning yourself into the kind of individual that will be able to help other people get what they want. That means A) learning to spot the problems people have, B) learning to differentiate between the problems that are mildly uncomfortable and those that people will actually be willing to pay for, C) gaining the skills necessary to drill down on one particular kind of issues, that can later on become your own "niche", and D) building a conveyor belt that will be able to solve those problems at scale, without your direct involvement later on.

Starting from zero and stuffing your brain full of ideas along the lines of "content should be personalized, the length of the content, the language of the content, voice and tone, and using memory emotion and motivation" - all the while having no perspective whatsoever where that would fit in the overall business cycle of the larger enterprise is just a plain waste of time. The one that feels "productive" because you're "learning" via some fancy "degree" - that was engineered and designed behind the scenes to make you feel precisely that, in order to bait you later on into going for one of their worthless "certificates", that will make the most wonderful addition to the rest of your toilet ambiance.

-

Get clear on you. What's your end game? Learning a bit of this and that because "this is the attention economy" smells a whole lot of "I have no clue where I'm going, but - ooh, shiny! - digital marketing's cool". Understand where you currently stand, understand your options, understand what appeals to you more and what doesn't spark any interest at all, project that into the next 10 years, and start picking up the skills required to get you there. Build the foundation first - the exact set of UTF-8 symbols that has to be "personalized" and adapted to the right "voice and tone" will come later.

And if you are sure that digital marketing is the answer for you, then build your foundation there. Look into copywriting if you have confidence in your desire to focus on joining UTF-8 sequences together, into SMM if you're interested in learning about the way dropshipping gurus keep luring people into the promises of easy money with their $299 courses that will definitely teach you all you need to know to launch your $1M/month store, and into psychology (and sales, in particular) if you actually want to understand the mental processes going behind the scenes in people's minds.

-

Best of effort, persistence, and discipline. Luck will follow suit.

 

[Xeon]

I may be (extremely) biased in a not-so-positive direction when it comes to this topic, in part because my brain still has a bit of trouble figuring out how is it, exactly, that a bunch of seemingly bright and capable folk have gone ever so slightly off the rails into a never-ending series of pontifications about subjects, completely disconnected from anything that could even remotely be considered genuinely useful, helpful, and beneficial to the end recipients. Yet here are my two cents.

Warning: strong language, emotionally charged opinion. Keep reading at your own peril.

-

1) There's no such thing as a "content". The dictionary definition points out to the linguistic heritage, defined by:


The "content" is what you can see inside your bowl of cereal in the morning. The "content" is the heap of clothes, stuffed inside your cupboard. The "content" is that which is contained, in a clearly delimited container, of a specific shape, created for a specific purpose. I genuinely don't understand how the hell did this term came to be used in a corporatized, lifeless, completely devoid of any meaningful essence, setting of the modern trendy business-y jargon.

Perhaps because there's no need to pay anyone a few cents too many if all they're doing for you is "producing content" that only the Google crawler will ever give a **** about? It still eludes me, truly - up to this day.

-

2) No one gave a heck, gives a heck, and will ever give a heck about any "content" that you'll ever produce. People don't go online looking for "content" to consume. Businesses are not built on "content". No one derives any value, any benefit, from any kind of a f* "content". People have problems to solve, and they have aspirations to fulfill. Period. Full stop.

Some of those are physical (a taxing illness - or a desire to get in shape, get noticed by the opposite sex, find the "one true love" or screw around with twice as many girls as the chad from your local circle of "buddies"), some are emotional (a gnawing sense of meaninglessness, boredom, pain - or a longing for the sense of peace and harmony with the world).

In business setting, people have intellectual demands (having too much information to process, too many risks to account for, too many unknown variables in the mix - or a desire to gain an upper-hand of a "genius entrepreneur" that will spot opportunities left and right, leaving the "competition" behind). A subset of those are "tactical" needs (how do I stop losing money on Google Ads - and how do I make the TikTok my b**** that will generate me a ton of leads for free).

"Content creators" is just an amorphous blob of a term that mixes together people that have nothing to do with each other at all: the clowns/entertainers, and the educators/teachers. Sure, it's a spectrum. Sure, Mr. Beast has, without a doubt, taught a whole lot of teenage boys about the value of persistence, and a whole lot more about the fact that they don't have to strive for the level of Elon Musk if they want to claim that they've "made it". Sure, you can be somewhere in the middle. No one will ever pay you for the "content" that you create, though - only for what it will do for others.

Which leads right into the next point.

-

3) No amount of "content creation" will get you anywhere if you don't have any purpose behind it. Marketing is a tool - used to draw people's attention to the value of the service that you're able to provide. If you don't have any value, if there's no service provided, if your ability to get people from their horrid state A (for "agony") to the desired state E (for "ecstasy") is below zero, no amount of learning about any "content" strategies and methods will move the needle.

If you're just starting out, your focus should be on turning yourself into the kind of individual that will be able to help other people get what they want. That means A) learning to spot the problems people have, B) learning to differentiate between the problems that are mildly uncomfortable and those that people will actually be willing to pay for, C) gaining the skills necessary to drill down on one particular kind of issues, that can later on become your own "niche", and D) building a conveyor belt that will be able to solve those problems at scale, without your direct involvement later on.

Starting from zero and stuffing your brain full of ideas along the lines of "content should be personalized, the length of the content, the language of the content, voice and tone, and using memory emotion and motivation" - all the while having no perspective whatsoever where that would fit in the overall business cycle of the larger enterprise is just a plain waste of time. The one that feels "productive" because you're "learning" via some fancy "degree" - that was engineered and designed behind the scenes to make you feel precisely that, in order to bait you later on into going for one of their worthless "certificates", that will make the most wonderful addition to the rest of your toilet ambiance.

-

Get clear on you. What's your end game? Learning a bit of this and that because "this is the attention economy" smells a whole lot of "I have no clue where I'm going, but - ooh, shiny! - digital marketing's cool". Understand where you currently stand, understand your options, understand what appeals to you more and what doesn't spark any interest at all, project that into the next 10 years, and start picking up the skills required to get you there. Build the foundation first - the exact set of UTF-8 symbols that has to be "personalized" and adapted to the right "voice and tone" will come later.

And if you are sure that digital marketing is the answer for you, then build your foundation there. Look into copywriting if you have confidence in your desire to focus on joining UTF-8 sequences together, into SMM if you're interested in learning about the way dropshipping gurus keep luring people into the promises of easy money with their $299 courses that will definitely teach you all you need to know to launch your $1M/month store, and into psychology (and sales, in particular) if you actually want to understand the mental processes going behind the scenes in people's minds.

-

Best of effort, persistence, and discipline. Luck will follow suit.

GOLD!!!!!

 

[Kevin88660]

It's quite apparent that I've started asking questions too early. I'll get more educated on the topic, and I'll start executing soon then I'll write back. I'm honored that you replied to me, you were the first person I followed on this forum.

Latest trend: Ai Generated Content

 

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[Ahmed Elakkad]

I may be (extremely) biased in a not-so-positive direction when it comes to this topic, in part because my brain still has a bit of trouble figuring out how is it, exactly, that a bunch of seemingly bright and capable folk have gone ever so slightly off the rails into a never-ending series of pontifications about subjects, completely disconnected from anything that could even remotely be considered genuinely useful, helpful, and beneficial to the end recipients. Yet here are my two cents.

Warning: strong language, emotionally charged opinion. Keep reading at your own peril.

-

1) There's no such thing as a "content". The dictionary definition points out to the linguistic heritage, defined by:


The "content" is what you can see inside your bowl of cereal in the morning. The "content" is the heap of clothes, stuffed inside your cupboard. The "content" is that which is contained, in a clearly delimited container, of a specific shape, created for a specific purpose. I genuinely don't understand how the hell did this term came to be used in a corporatized, lifeless, completely devoid of any meaningful essence, setting of the modern trendy business-y jargon.

Perhaps because there's no need to pay anyone a few cents too many if all they're doing for you is "producing content" that only the Google crawler will ever give a **** about? It still eludes me, truly - up to this day.

-

2) No one gave a heck, gives a heck, and will ever give a heck about any "content" that you'll ever produce. People don't go online looking for "content" to consume. Businesses are not built on "content". No one derives any value, any benefit, from any kind of a f* "content". People have problems to solve, and they have aspirations to fulfill. Period. Full stop.

Some of those are physical (a taxing illness - or a desire to get in shape, get noticed by the opposite sex, find the "one true love" or screw around with twice as many girls as the chad from your local circle of "buddies"), some are emotional (a gnawing sense of meaninglessness, boredom, pain - or a longing for the sense of peace and harmony with the world).

In business setting, people have intellectual demands (having too much information to process, too many risks to account for, too many unknown variables in the mix - or a desire to gain an upper-hand of a "genius entrepreneur" that will spot opportunities left and right, leaving the "competition" behind). A subset of those are "tactical" needs (how do I stop losing money on Google Ads - and how do I make the TikTok my b**** that will generate me a ton of leads for free).

"Content creators" is just an amorphous blob of a term that mixes together people that have nothing to do with each other at all: the clowns/entertainers, and the educators/teachers. Sure, it's a spectrum. Sure, Mr. Beast has, without a doubt, taught a whole lot of teenage boys about the value of persistence, and a whole lot more about the fact that they don't have to strive for the level of Elon Musk if they want to claim that they've "made it". Sure, you can be somewhere in the middle. No one will ever pay you for the "content" that you create, though - only for what it will do for others.

Which leads right into the next point.

-

3) No amount of "content creation" will get you anywhere if you don't have any purpose behind it. Marketing is a tool - used to draw people's attention to the value of the service that you're able to provide. If you don't have any value, if there's no service provided, if your ability to get people from their horrid state A (for "agony") to the desired state E (for "ecstasy") is below zero, no amount of learning about any "content" strategies and methods will move the needle.

If you're just starting out, your focus should be on turning yourself into the kind of individual that will be able to help other people get what they want. That means A) learning to spot the problems people have, B) learning to differentiate between the problems that are mildly uncomfortable and those that people will actually be willing to pay for, C) gaining the skills necessary to drill down on one particular kind of issues, that can later on become your own "niche", and D) building a conveyor belt that will be able to solve those problems at scale, without your direct involvement later on.

Starting from zero and stuffing your brain full of ideas along the lines of "content should be personalized, the length of the content, the language of the content, voice and tone, and using memory emotion and motivation" - all the while having no perspective whatsoever where that would fit in the overall business cycle of the larger enterprise is just a plain waste of time. The one that feels "productive" because you're "learning" via some fancy "degree" - that was engineered and designed behind the scenes to make you feel precisely that, in order to bait you later on into going for one of their worthless "certificates", that will make the most wonderful addition to the rest of your toilet ambiance.

-

Get clear on you. What's your end game? Learning a bit of this and that because "this is the attention economy" smells a whole lot of "I have no clue where I'm going, but - ooh, shiny! - digital marketing's cool". Understand where you currently stand, understand your options, understand what appeals to you more and what doesn't spark any interest at all, project that into the next 10 years, and start picking up the skills required to get you there. Build the foundation first - the exact set of UTF-8 symbols that has to be "personalized" and adapted to the right "voice and tone" will come later.

And if you are sure that digital marketing is the answer for you, then build your foundation there. Look into copywriting if you have confidence in your desire to focus on joining UTF-8 sequences together, into SMM if you're interested in learning about the way dropshipping gurus keep luring people into the promises of easy money with their $299 courses that will definitely teach you all you need to know to launch your $1M/month store, and into psychology (and sales, in particular) if you actually want to understand the mental processes going behind the scenes in people's minds.

-

Best of effort, persistence, and discipline. Luck will follow suit.

Thank you so much for your reply. I’m definitely learning with the goal of learning which is aimless as you’ve stated before. Perhaps I’m doing it the other way around.
Nevertheless, your advice has opened a new perspective to me, and I’m going to act based on it. I’m incredibly grateful for everyone’s replies, they are really helpful!


Now, back to work.