should you be innovative? or do what works? | #38
some musings on making content
Hey friends!
I’ve been thinking about how innovative one should be when creating blogs, videos, etc.
As I dive into the world of flipping websites and plan my content strategy, I’m asking myself how “out there” I want to be.
Do I want to move to the beat of my own drum as much as possible? Do I want to be unique and develop a smaller, but loyal audience? Should I make what I want to see?
Or do I want to be more systematic? Do I want to identify what works, copy it, twist it enough to be Different, and rinse and repeat until Great Success?
In this newsletter:
the argument for being unique, from Scott DeLong
the argument for doing what works, from Ahrefs
but what if you’re stubborn like me, and want the best of both worlds?
The argument for being unique
In the SEO and website space, Scott DeLong seems like an advocate for the “unique” strategy. Scott has created and sold multiple websites that generated billions of page views and tens of millions in revenue. Here’s an excerpt from one of his newsletters:
Your site is your domain (literally and figuratively). Create the content you want to see.
Because here’s the best part:
You will, in turn, create content people didn’t even know they wanted.
And that’s how you make a lot of money.
My last company, a travel site that averaged 500,000 visits a day, is the perfect example.
When I first launched it, the content consisted of things like: The 17 Most Beautiful Spots in _________.
To be honest, I was certain that new ideas would run dry after a couple of months.
How much can you really write about one location?
But I had already built some relatively large Facebook Pages around these locations, so I figured I’d just milk it as long as I could.
Fast forward one year, and I had dozens of writers, millions of followers, hundreds of thousands of email subscribers, and thousands of articles. Fast forward to now, and it has hundreds of thousands of articles, millions of subscribers, and several full time employees.
That’s a business that started with, “how am I going to come up with new ideas for more than two months?”
Through constant adaptation, what we ended up doing was creating a market.
If I had used keyword research to dictate what to write next, this would have been a colossal failure.
I’d be chasing other people’s wins rather than making my own.
We had a huge spreadsheet where we’d share ideas: literally just stuff that sounded fun to write, stuff our audience would probably enjoy, and, perhaps most notably, stuff our audience didn’t even know existed.
It’s not always about answering what someone is already searching for. Sometimes it’s about showing people something they didn’t even realize they wanted.
The argument for doing what works
Contrast that with customary SEO strategy. Here’s one of Ahrefs’ latest YouTube videos.
For those unfamiliar, Ahrefs is a tool to help you rank on search engines like Google.
Here’s the relevant part of the transcript from that video:
So when I'm trying to figure out what Google and searchers want to see, I'm looking at three main things.
First, I'm going to look at the titles of the top-ranking pages.
What kind of pages have they created?
Is there a specific format they follow?
Is there a specific audience they're targeting?
Or is there a specific angle they've all taken?
The second thing [to look at] is called SERP features.
SERP features are everything else that's not a regular blue link result.
We already know that there's a featured snippet, and we definitely-definitely want to optimize for it. But check out this question box here, which is often called "People Also Ask."
If the box is true to its name, then that means that people who search for "blogging tips" are also searching for these queries.
And this one, this one right here, is very-very interesting: "how can I get better at blogging". We already know these people are beginner bloggers, but I think we've uncovered why they search for "blogging tips."
They don't have the goal of making more money, they don't necessarily even care to get more traffic, they just want to get better at blogging.
The final thing I'm looking for are commonalities between my competitors' articles and important things I might have missed.
And the best way to do this is to just read their articles and compare it with mine, which is what I'm going to do right now.
In a nutshell: find out what works and make sure you’re doing it.
It’s hard not to see the merit in that strategy. It works, after all.
But what if you want ~~ the best of both worlds ~~?
As I watched that video, I was kind of turned off at first, honestly.
Where’s my edge in all of this? What’s to stop someone else from doing the same thing?
How is any of this unique to me? What makes me, specifically, called to do this? How is this different than doing any regular job?
But the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a pure egotistical response.
I’m new to the field. I don’t know anything about the history of the space, what the problems are, why certain decisions were made, etc.
In other words, of course I shouldn’t expect to contribute to the field by doing something new. I don’t know what the problems are and I don’t know what the existing solutions are.
In due time, I’ll understand the space better and be able to make contributions that are unique AND useful, but until then, I must be patient and humble.
HOWEVER. 😂
I’m also a believer that
I’m pretty smart, thoughtful, and creative
experts in the field are humans and therefore susceptible to stagnancy, stubbornness, the curse of knowledge, etc
I have nothing to lose (besides my time) and everything to gain by Just Tryin’ Stuff
Just because I’m new doesn’t mean I can’t make something great. Dumb luck is a thing.
So, as of now, my strategy for creating content and flipping websites is some hybrid of the two philosophies. Something like,
do what works, particularly in the absence of better ideas, and especially if I don’t know why it works
but if I have ideas I think are better, try them out in in the least risky way possible
rinse and repeat, documenting what I learn, until Great Success
So, in one sentence:
Do what works unless I have an idea I know is better or that I have little to lose by trying it out.
That’s probably my best bet at having the best of both worlds. We’ll see how it goes!
I’m currently binging a whole bunch of content about how to do SEO, how to find deals, etc, with the goal of buying a website here in the next month or so.
Then I’ll fix it up and see how much I can sell it for!
And if I can do that in a repeatable, feasible, profitable way, then.. I guess I’ll go bigger! We’ll see.