Another great idea that didn’t work for me
“It’s fine! We can figure this out. Google, ‘How do I cool down the control rods.’” (Image by Markus Distelrath)
Ever hear this marketing tip? You can use Google suggest to find the questions your ideal client is asking.
Just type in something related to your niche, and voilà! Tons of content ideas that your ideal client is already looking for!
Seems so simple. But I couldn’t make it work.
When I started out, I didn’t know who my “ideal client” was. That still feels like a pretty reductive way to talk about human beings, honestly.
And even if I had some idea of who I wanted to talk to, I didn’t want to just rehash stuff from Google searches. I had stuff I wanted to say. I had ideas that I wanted to share with the world!
When I saw people sharing tips like the one above, I was intimidated and second-guessed myself. However, as I kept showing up, I realized that there is more than one way to come up with ideas for content. There’s more than one way to build an audience, and there’s more than one way to develop a professional reputation.
Structured, systematic content strategies are great in theory. I’m starting to be able to take advantage of them, but I couldn’t make them work at first. I had to figure out who I wanted to talk to and what I wanted to say to them before I could think about using a system to simplify the process.
I learned who I wanted to talk to and what I wanted to say to them through a cycle of sharing and listening. It’s taken me in a direction that I wouldn’t have thought to go in at the start.
Even though I now know more about who I’m trying to reach, I still haven’t done the Google suggest thing. Creating content to address problems that way feels a little cheap and superficial to me.
Maybe it’s a little bit like my friend Jessica Malnik’s approach to ChatGPT. As a writer and content strategist, she uses the tool to tell her what not to write about. Whatever the AI spits out in response to a prompt is the conventional wisdom, and she avoids that in order to come up with a fresh perspective.
Of course, maybe I don’t need a fresh perspective to address the needs “my ideal client” already has. But I’m not convinced that the problems I’m interested in helping people solve are so clear-cut that they’re being typed into Google. We don’t expect the Internet to have custom solutions for us, so we don’t ask.
It’s possible that I’m making everything harder than it needs to be, which I don’t like. Usually, making things harder means I’m on the wrong track.
“How do I find more meaning in my work bag?”
That said, I don’t think I’m making things more complicated. Maybe I’m simply acknowledging that the challenge of connecting meaningfully with my fellow humans is more complex than the common tips and tricks would make it seem.
It’s logical that if I enjoy someone’s free solution to a particular problem that I have, I might want to pay them to solve the next one. But I might simply thank them and move on. It’s become a transactional relationship, and that’s not what I want with the people I seek to serve.
Not all of us solve a particular problem with our work or our content. Not all of us start out with a clear sense of what we want to do and who we want to do it for. Not all of us will have an efficient system from the beginning. If you don’t, you’re not alone. And you might just find your way anyway.
If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.