During Baltimore AdWeek this year, I got the pleasure of listening to Justin Kownacki speak on creating web content people will actually enjoy and share. I won’t divulge too much of what he said because, well, you snooze you lose! I will tell you one thing he said that got me thinking, “It’s not that hard to create media people relate to, we just talk ourselves out of it.”
How true is that? There seems to be this belief that creating engaging, relatable content is hard to the point of being some kind of black magic. Creatives try to decipher what the “secret” is, like there is some formula we can crack while clients ask for the world and then settle with the safe bet. I think we’ve all psyched ourselves out a bit on this one.
Not to say that creating engaging content is easy, it definitely isn’t. However we’ve made it into a terrifying monster that eats web denizens like us for breakfast. We still valiantly charge into work each morning with our swords held high, but I know for me, after eight hours of trying to brainstorm interesting ideas I can get discouraged. Whether it’s a blog post, or a client campaign or a giveaway that I need to get a Facebook audience to participate in, I can convince myself that it’s never going to take off. And you know what? It might not. I’m not going to lose my job though. I’m going to try again and at the end of the day, the biggest obstacle to creating good content is often my own insecurities and doubts. Mr. Kownacki shared a plethora of good advice on creating content, but the best thing he said was that we just need to stop talking ourselves out of it.