Document, Don't Create: An Insight Into Consistency in Content Marketing

As a digital marketing professional, I have never really considered content marketing as my forte. Although I do have a blog, share contents on social media occasionally (yes, pictures of my food), and have once taken a job as a freelance content writer -- I would never call myself a content creator or marketer. The year 2020, however, has been a huge surprise to me in many ways (and so it has to you, hasn’t it?). Just like many people who are stuck at home, I’ve been finding ways to keep my sanity amidst the ongoing pandemic; one of which is by writing and sharing contents. One of the ways this year has surprised me is how I then eventually became keen to learn and practice content marketing.

When it comes to content, I have found that sometimes creating and sharing could get a little bit too complicated. We often decide to dwell too much on creating the 'perfect' content. We care too much about things like fancy equipment, video editing skills, or even the thoughts of 'how many people will read/view/like my content?’ or 'how much will it create impact in the society?’ What usually happens next is we end up doing nothing; we don’t follow through with our ideas or values that we want to share.

Lack of Consistency: A Recurring Problem

Let’s think of a hypothetical scenario.

If you love cooking, you might want to start creating cooking videos on Instagram (or Tiktok, which is currently popular for cooking videos). You eventually start sharing cooking videos and get more excited to continue doing so. Everything’s going well, and your contents are slowly getting positive responses. For references and content-related research, you often look at more ‘successful’ cooking Instagram accounts -- people who have started earlier than you. They inspire you on good days, but unfortunately, on worse days, these thoughts start popping in your mind:

“Will I ever be as successful as they are?” 

“But I don’t have such good quality cameras..”

Sometimes, these thoughts develop (not in a good way), they then become something like these:

“I should’ve started earlier. I think I’m late to the game.”

“My videos/photos/contents won’t matter and be as meaningful as I want them to be because they can’t compete with other contents. Why should I continue?”

When we dig deeper into these thoughts, they’re all actually rooted in one thought:

“I don’t believe in what I’m capable of.”

You’re getting demotivated, and then voila! You decide to just stop after just barely starting. To me personally, the above scenario is not too hypothetical and hits rather close to home because I have gone through it. So. Many. Times. I have started countless blogs and Instagram accounts just about all kinds of different things: food, travel photography, personal contemplation--anything I love sharing about. The same things kept happening though: I eventually stopped.

To me, starting something has always been exciting. I know I can rely on myself to start a project - from doing research and learning to creating a strategy. But staying consistent is a different kind of skill that many would find rather challenging. For me, I find it especially true in sharing contents. Whether I’m starting a blog or an Instagram account, I would post a lot of things enthusiastically, drowned in the newness; it feels like I have a new, exciting project to take care of. I’d be loving it. But when I continue to find ways to maintain and make it 'perfect', I often end up losing my motivation in the process.

It has then become a cycle: after stopping, I start to feel less confident -- thinking that I wouldn’t be able to restart and eventually be consistent in my work. It goes on, and on, and on every time it happens.

Taking a New Approach: Document, don’t create

One of the eye-opening things I've learned about content marketing comes from the mantra "Document, don’t create", said by Gary Vee in one of his videos. Gary encourages people to ‘document, don’t create’. What does it mean? It means we focus on capturing ideas and executing them without worrying about creating the next masterpiece. When we focus on documenting instead of creating, it’s supposed to take away all of unnecessary worries and over-analyzing thoughts when we’re working on our contents; it keeps us focused on doing instead of too much strategizing. Ultimately, we become consistent in sharing the contents that matter.

So I was wondering: “Will it actually work?” It was intriguing for me to apply ‘document, don’t create’, as it’s such a new concept to me. And so, I did.

It all started when I decided to take an opportunity to share about future digital skills in a webinar, offered by a new LinkedIn connection who happens to hold regular webinars. Note that this *sharing in a webinar* is something I had never done before, so it was a big step out of my comfort zone and a huge leap of faith. Although it was initially daunting, I jumped into the experience to have fun with it and enjoyed the learning that I got from it. After the webinar, I did two things: first, I shared about the webinar on a LinkedIn post and my personal Instagram account and second, I shared my presentation deck on LinkedIn, so that those who want to learn more about what I’ve shared during the webinar would be able to download it.

In short, I started documenting.

Lucky enough, the experience has led me to another webinar sharing opportunity. This time, I would be sharing about something I’ve been doing in the past 6 years: digital marketing. A lively community-based Twitter account whose conversations revolve around career and job hunting was kind enough to let me share about digital marketing with fellow digital marketing enthusiasts, mostly college students and fresh graduates.

During this process, I found a few very interesting findings: a lot of people are keen to learn about digital marketing, and in the middle of this pandemic, the demand for learning resources has never been this high. It encourages me to think about my next steps: Should I start sharing about digital marketing? Since I’ve always loved sharing about it to just almost everyone.

Although I was hesitant at first, because of the ‘inconsistency cycle’ I seem to be cursed by, I decided to go through with it. So after the second webinar, I tried to step up my documentation game:

• I shared about the session on social media posts (LinkedIn and Twitter, where most of my audiences are active)
• I made my presentation deck downloadable on my LinkedIn profile (thankfully the host has made my deck also available on Google Drive for Twitter audience to download)
• Again, thanks to the host, my webinar was also uploaded to Youtube, so I shared the video on my social media platforms.

But that’s not all. I engaged in conversations with those who have attended my webinar, thanked them for joining the session, asked for their honest feedback on it and asked them whether they want to hear more about digital marketing from me. I then created a poll to understand how they’d want to hear from me.

After combining the poll result and my own research, I made a conclusion: I am starting a podcast about digital marketing called Digital Marketing Snacks. So far, I’ve published a trailer and an introduction episode (currently working on my pilot episode to be published within this week!).

Now, I have realized that in the past 2-3 months, I have successfully become more consistent in sharing contents: by sharing knowledge, useful information, personal thoughts, and values with the people I care about. By practicing it regularly (just do it!) and not letting overthinking thoughts hold myself from getting my words out there, it has allowed myself to grow and improve myself. It also opens doors to many opportunities which are waiting to be explored.

So.. What have I learned?

I have learned a few valuable things by trying to focus on documenting instead of creating contents:

• Documenting mindset helps me in becoming more productive - no overthinking things. It takes my focus away from trying to create perfect contents -- I realize how many times I have had ideas only to not execute them in the end because I thought the ideas were either not good enough or I just ‘don’t have the time’ and they just float away. Ideas are always great in our mind, but they’re not valid until we’ve executed them. Ideas are actually greatER when they’re executed. Which leads to my second point:
• Documenting mindset helps me stay consistent in doing, evaluating, and improving. By being productive, I can see the results. It’s better to be aware that my contents need some improvements based on the results than to think that my ideas are just great without actually doing something about it.
• Documenting mindset shifts my focus from results to process. And this is important because as human beings, we tend to compare ourselves to other people by seeing the results of their hard work instead of the process that they’ve gone through. By documenting, we focus on improving ourselves by working with what we have and improving ourselves along the journey. It really takes away the burden of ‘creating the next masterpiece’. 
• Documenting mindset boosts my confidence. It really pushes me to start doing more and worrying less. We might realize that we can are capable of doing things once we start doing them, but documenting takes us to another level where we actually keep track of our work and allow ourselves to look back on our journey and see how far we've come. Documenting, after all, is like a diary of your own portfolio. Often times, seeing how much I have progressed boosts my confidence: it gives a feeling of "Wow, I could actually do something like that" and in the end, it pushes me to continue learning and improve myself.

Conclusion

While reading this, you might also realize that this article is my way of documenting. It helps me remember what I’ve learned, the effort I’ve made, and most importantly how my belief in myself has helped me stay consistent in sharing the things that I value to the people I care about. This, to me, is the most important lesson I’ve learned in my content marketing journey so far.

How are you staying consistent in doing what you love? Do you think ‘document, don’t create’ could help you too in some ways?

Let me know in the comments.