How much content is too much?
Discover more from Vivid Minds from Anastasia
How much content is too much?
The forever spin of the content machine or when we became promoters more than writers
For the last two months I’ve felt more exhausted than ever. I couldn't exactly pinpoint where it came from. Especially because it started around the time when I decided to dedicate my time to writing - something I love and care about. After five years of everyday work for clients, I was finally able to focus on only creating the pieces I like.
Which meant doing interviews with people who excite and inspire me for this project, Vivid Minds, writing for large business magazines in the US (my dream since I came to New York seven years ago as a journalist), and starting to work on my book…. I was also invited to become a contributor to Forbes.com. On the surface, things couldn’t be better. But it wasn't long before I started feeling incessantly tired.
As I found purpose in my writing (and it was by no means called “Content” in my dreams), I also needed people to discover and read it somehow.
Which means that, along with writing itself, I had to spend most of my time on promotion. If I wanted to write something big (a story with a few interviews, which would take me a month to accomplish), especially for Vivid Minds (let’s assume large publications such as Forbes can sustain their own promotion efforts. Although their editors love freelance contributors to have a social media following and learn “SEO tricks”), I had to dedicate even more time to promote them. Yet, by the time I finished a feature story, which included a few rounds of edits and a proofread, I was too tired to even think about promotion.
After leading Vivid Minds for 6 months, I realized that it makes no sense to put so much effort without growing my readership. Before I could justify myself for not doing promo thinking that I’d first work on the quality. It was also hard to find them on Google since my domain rating was very new, and hence, low. So I hired an SEO consultant to come up with a plan on how to make them pop. In two days, he gave me a complete list of the headlines, captions and bits of words to use inside the copy.
That’s for the grid and headlines that I’d been working for a much longer time, checking every word to make it right. Would I sacrifice my captions for SEO? No, and I did not use his suggestions.
The other day I sent a piece to a magazine. The article had nothing to do with ChatGPT, but it did with technology. The editor replied back saying that the title wouldn’t perform well on their website. “Can you use something that includes ChatGPT?” I got it, and I did it.
But I digress. The point is that whoever I like my writing (and there are days, when I get stuck, and I wholeheartedly hate it), I need to utilize all the possible platforms to promote it. I have around 8K people on Facebook, a bit over 1K on Twitter and around that on Instagram, plus 3K on LinkedIn. I do Substack regularly now and just watched a 5-hour series on how to promote it here. And they just started Notes, which, doesn’t get me particularly excited about more bits of content!
I’m lucky to be averse to videos, so I don’t use TikTok. Although I’ve got all the emerging platforms - Post.news, Nostr, and Mirror.xyz - and some more “Twitter rivals” - instead of it. Sometimes my husband would put my stories on Reddit, and others would share them on Telegram channels.
I don’t share it all at once, of course, but I’m not proud of it. That overwhelming, extra saturating feeling of never doing enough for my writing or, worse, sacrificing time for improving my writing, is what drives me into that tiring and anxious trap. Well, I could have watched another video on how to become a better writer or finished a book by Rooney, which is overdue on my nightstand, instead of doing that 5-hour course on promo.
Yet, there is always a feeling, that if you are not a Donna Tart, you have to write more and post more. While others write more and post more, so there is no exit. “You have to be consistent”, - any writing course will tell you.
I need to also mention that I make almost zero dollars from this writing and posting (except when I write for clients and provide consulting), so please support this Substack if you enjoy reading it.
Today, I googled this question “‘How much content is too much’?
“There is no such thing as too much content. Whatever industry your business or startup operates in, you will need to develop content” - it said.
Whatever life stage you operate in, too much content is only defined by how much of it you can handle.