Why I believe in anti-content content

A minor drama has been playing out in my life recently. It goes something like this:

Me: I'm a freelancer. I should grow my network. I should increase my online presence to get more work.

[I start following more content people on LinkedIn, commenting on posts, and posting more.]

LinkedIn: Hey Sarah! It's great you're spending more time here. I can see you're interested in content writers, and growing your followers! Here are some people and posts you might like.

[LinkedIn starts showing me posts in roughly two camps: 1) content writers sharing their approaches, and explaining why we're still relevant in an age of AI, and 2) people who have scaled their LinkedIn audiences to dizzying heights, built six figure income streams off the back of it, and are very keen to show you how to do the same.]

Me: It's really important for me to build my personal brand. I need to showcase my expertise, I need to do what other people are doing, I need to spend more time on here.

[I engage for a week or two. I check my feed a few times a day, I comment, I follow, I post. And then I start to feel weird about it all. I get fed up seeing the same things rehashed, the same ideas repackaged, the same people having the same exchanges on the same kinds of posts. It feels shallow, cynical, and completely devoid of meaning.]

Me: Surely this can't be the only way to be successful?

[I decide to stop.]

**************

The first thing to mention in this cautionary tale is that I don't really like social media. It doesn't fit my style of self-expression, which generally is to think about things – a lot – and craft a considered response.

But I think this is kind of the point.

Because most of this posting, the carousels, the commenting, is about creating buzz rather than original thought. It's a constant churn of content that's pretty formulaic in nature, built to feed the algorithm in a system that rewards a very specific type of activity. And the more this activity is successful, the more we do it. We produce and consume the same stuff, over and over again.

Sandra Macele (writing in a LinkedIn post) calls this farmed content.

'What grows fastest survives. And what survives gets farmed over and over.'

As we replicate what we see is successful, we chase performance, rather than meaning. Too often this results in the boring, the average, the predictable, and we're only going to get more of it with the unstoppable allure of AI.

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it really make a noise?

In writing, how you present your work (style, form) is just as important as what you write. Obviously, it's important to adapt this for different purposes and channels. But whilst social media has to be clickable, and easily digestible, this doesn't mean it can't have depth. I'm not suggesting that everyone starts communicating in contemplative, long-form blog posts like this one - there are a lot of insightful and original ideas shared on socials, just as there's lots of content that ranks highly in SEO and also delivers real value to its audience.

But in an internet world directed by algorithms, where visibility is validated over credibility, we do find too much simplification and repetition. The loudest voices might have learned how to crack the system, but how much do they really have to say?

The second thing I want to mention is that I'm fully aware engaging with LinkedIn (or anything) for 'a week or two' isn't long enough to see results. It was long enough for me to go through a hype cycle of enthusiasm to disillusion, to question my approach to just about everything in my work, and come out the other side with pretty much the same attitude I had when I started, but that's just me.

I'm also aware that if you don't have an audience, you're obviously not going to have much luck in getting your ideas out there... I'd love to have a bigger profile online, and for more people to have access to my writing. But I want to do it authentically. My ideas, my style.

In the content biz I'd call this thought leadership, the kind of high-value material that only you or your business is uniquely positioned to create. It doesn't have to be long-form articles or posts, it can be in any form or style you like. But it's always about brand-building, and never solely about chasing trends and clicks.

In many ways, it's anti-content content.