Two Months In

Writing for almost two months, you look back at the origin and you look at the journey from the start to where you are now and you realize that in the process of finding your own voice, you forget the message you were trying to convey.

I built my website two months ago and started writing content on LinkedIn and X as a method of distribution. But somewhere along the way, while trying to understand attention and gain the attention of the audience, I stopped writing about marketing and started writing about the content itself. Which isn’t entirely bad, content is a part of marketing too. But it’s time for me to return to marketing as a whole. Testing, breaking, fixing, getting results and measuring them.

In the last two months, I wrote 6-7 posts on LinkedIn and they barely performed. Maybe my professional voice isn’t sharp enough yet or maybe I do not have enough value in my writing to attract that type of audience. But I have been writing consistently on X for 58 days now and these two months have felt like a rollercoaster ride.

When I started on X, I was using ChatGPT to write tweets for me. I had systems, extracting tweets from blog posts, distributing across social channels to drive traffic to my blog. Logically it made total sense.

But there was a problem. I was looking at it mechanically, which is only half good. When you write content, especially on platforms like X, you really need to mean what you have to say to get attention. And gaining attention is only the first part.

The second biggest problem comes after it.

What value do you actually provide?

This question has been hanging over my head for a while. In some ways it still is. When you grab the attention of the audience, you have to answer this question and you can’t fake it by hiding behind content systems. It really has to come from within. Your expertise, which comes from experience, which comes from you actually doing things.

I still do not have a formula to gain attention or for providing value. And quite honestly what I realize is there is no formula, because what worked for me was just me honestly saying what was happening with me. Me writing into a void when no one is listening and what that was doing to me and how it made me grow as a person. That was it. There is no secret sauce I came across.

I am nearing the second month of writing content and my content is performing better now than when I started. In the beginning I was struggling to get impressions. Now I get one to three likes, a comment or two, and on rare occasions someone retweets my tweet. My testing of content is bearing slow results. Content is a major part of marketing in the current era. But now that I have a better idea about attention and value than I had when I started, I have to be intentional again and experiment and analyze again.

Honesty in marketing is not a new idea. Everyone says it works. Every marketing book, every content guide, every thread about growing an audience eventually says the same thing. Be real, be honest, be yourself.

But if everyone knows it works, why is it so rare?

Why do brands still make creatives to please their owners instead of their audiences? Why do marketers still hide behind systems and calendars and metrics that don’t move anyone? Why did I spend weeks using AI to write my tweets before I finally wrote something that actually landed?

I don’t have the answer yet. But I know that’s the right question. And that’s what the next experiment is about.