I wrote my first blog post on this very blog 19 years ago, which makes be feel kinda boss and kinda old at the same time. It’s like a meme of Cher I watched recently – it was from a commercial she was in recently, where someone saw her roll in looking incredible in her super tight black outfit and yelled, “Hey, she’s both old and young at the same time!”. That’s blogger me! I’m an original blogger and have been around long enough now to see all iterations of apps, content, marketing and the never-ending quest to be liked, shared, and followed.
I’ve grown my entire career from my blog – including books, courses, products, a magazine, podcasts, so I can’t complain or say these 19 years were a big waste of time. Quite the contrary, I reached my dreams to relocate permanently to Europe, have a child, and write books for a living and become a designer. I freaking did it all because of having decor8 back in the day, a blog that earned enough revenue on blog ads alone for me to reach these dreams – not including what I earned on everything else I was up to.
And sure, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but the ups far exceeded the downs and I’ve pressed on regardless.
Yet, the pressure to constantly produce, innovate, and engage with mostly strangers every single day (and hour of the day) can leave creators feeling all sorts of things – and many of them negative. And that’s what I want to address in this post.
But here’s the good news: we don’t have to feel any of those things if we don’t wish to – we can control our mind (unless someone suffers from depression or mental illness, then that’s not possible without intervention) but for most of us, we can tell ourselves a better story, practice resilience, re-frame how things look for us currently.
Our creative journey online doesn’t have to become something that we dread waking up to each day because part of it involves content creation on social media.
To be successful online you have to understand business, marketing, branding, strategy, the importance of showing up, having focus and commitment, and so many other things but one of the biggest that lots of people struggle with is emotional intelligence and sensitivity. There are huge amounts of people online doing business who lack empathy and have zero people skills. They don’t hear their audience, they are unable to pick up on vibes and trends, they only care about money, fame, and more money.
There is a lot to being a content creator for instance whether to create content as your business or as part of your business. What do I mean? Well, a content creator can be a person who focuses on a topic like interior design and they produce content only about interiors with a focus on their home – renovation projects, DIY stories, organization tips, etc.
A content creator is also a person who runs a business – for instance, they have a small local shop in a busy city. They’re looking to target more customers locally and have an Instagram account and a newsletter with a website for that purpose. They seek to engage with others through these channels and create content for this purpose – to show what’s new in their shop, to share trending items that their customers love, etc. They may take photos or videos, or even go live on Instagram to share new things from their shop – such as unboxing new products that just came in. This is how they are also creating content.
Content can also be teaching online courses – and content is needed to develop a Substack or blog that is profitable or even a newsletter. Most people think it’s easy – “They can do it, so can I”, but the truth is there is nothing easy about running your own business online and creating content for it, or being a content creator as a profession. It’s challenging, frustrating, rewarding, hard, overwhelming, but never would I say, “easy”.