(This post originally appeared on LinkedIn — you can read it here)
Writing is a terrifying occupation.
It’s terrifying because anything you write can have consequences—from the tiniest tweet to widely-est read white paper, a mistake, a rude comment, or a blatant lie can get you in a great deal of trouble.
I’ve spent hours sweating over a two-paragraph email, cringed in anxiety before posting a tweet, and wondered about my life choices before publishing a blog post with a curse word in it.
I was letting fear control me—and my resulting content was the stuff you read at 5am when sleep isn’t happening and you’re all out of links to click.
Fear was stifling me—and I had no one to blame but myself.
Fear stifles our thinking and actions — Charles Stanley
Ole’ Charles was on point when he wrote this one.
As long as I let the fear flow through me, I bottled up my realness, locked away my genuine thoughts, and made my business writing as austere, bland, and corporate as I possibly could.
I avoided even a hint of originality (which could possibly get me in trouble), and I consistently churned out writing that was safe, unoffensive, and gagging-ly boring.
But more importantly, it wasn’t being read.
Every Day, People Are Being Smashed In The Face With Content — If You Can’t Do Them The Courtesy Of Pouring Your Heart Into Your Writing, Why The Hell Should They Read It?
When I wrote with fear freezing my fingers, when I tried to comport my writing public-wise, my writing was crap dear brothers.
I’m not saying it’s incredible today—but it doesn’t look like a corporate robot built it out of an algorithm.
I only did one thing differently: I started being earnest in my writing.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Except it’s not the world trying to make me something else—it’s me.
I am my own worst writing enemy—I censor myself. I see a beautiful idea and I say, “NO! Get down! That looks troublesome! What would your mother think?!”
Back then, in the before time, I wrote like a robot, and nobody read it.
Once I started writing less like HAL 8000 and more like myself, my writing improved. I started filling my writing with the random, obscure pop culture references that invade my speech. I started throwing in a random curse word or two. I started being real.
I stopped writing like something I wasn’t (I won’t say someone because, truly, it sounded like an alien wrote it).
I started being me.
And that was scary. Hell, it’s still scary. But it’s working. My content is being shared more, commented on more, and read more.
And I’m having way more fun writing it.
Incredible Content Is Exciting Because The Subject Matter Excites You, But That Excitement Fades—Meaningful Content Is Long Lasting Because It Sparks Something Inside You
And the content that means the most to me — that sparked something inside of me and made its way to my bookshelf or desktop — that content came from the creator’s heart.
Not their head.
They didn’t worry about sounding good or pissing someone off or getting in trouble — they wrote something real.
When you write in any marketing capacity, you have got to connect with people. Big brands spend millions of dollars to come up with the perfect piece of content to share.
Few of us have that budget, but we have something the big brands would pay billions of dollars for, that they would do anything to have.
We have ourselves. We have a story that matters to someone. We have a voice that inspires people. We are real, we are human, and we can share who we are—something the big brands can only dream of.
And when we create true content marketing — marketing not meant to get a sale or a lead or a click but to actually help someone — it has got to come from the heart.
Write something real, and your customers will connect.
Don’t let the fear keep you from impacting someone’s life.
