Digital Writing Q&A: The Best Content Diet For Digital Writers + Why You Shouldn't Optimize For SEO

Welcome to the Digital Writing podcast, where we talk about using writing to capture, keep and monetize attention. If you're looking to build an audience, start a business and scale yourself online, you're in the right spot. Welcome to another digital writing Q and A. Got some good questions today, so let's dive right into it. Cole, how important is the media you consume to your writing?

I love this question because again, it's one of those things I tweet all the time where reading doesn't make you a better writer, writing makes you a better writer, and that's, that's a really hard thing for especially newer writers to internalize. I. I really don't think that media consumption is a huge, has a huge impact on your writing. If there's a big if here. Asterisk. If what you're writing is coming from personal experience, personal knowledge, right, because you've already lived it. So if you're writing about how to be a project manager, and you've been a project manager for 15 years, you probably don't need to go read a lot about it because you've lived it and you already know what you're going to say. You know, you want to think about media, whether it's reading, whether it's watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, all of that stuff matters. When you are trying to write about something that you don't know about, you know, if you've never experienced it, then how are you going to write about it? Well, you got to go read about it, you got to go learn about it. You know, so I don't think that it's this one to one. In order to be a great writer, you got to just consume all this media. Like you have to think, well, what am I actually writing? And if you're writing something you've experienced, then you don't need to go spend 18, 20 hours reading about it. You already know what you're going to say versus if you're trying to write about something you haven't experienced, then you got to go read about it. What do you think, Nikki?

My take on this is it's less for the content and more for the inspiration, framework, template kind of way and delivery mechanism. So a lot of my reading right now is I'm actually trying to study the way ideas are being presented. So less the ideas themselves, but more how are people communicating them. So whether that's reading other people's Twitter threads, seeing how they go about it, reading newsletters and posts about just I'm always investigating the medium less than the content itself. And I think that's one of the byproducts of writing, is you're always on the lookout for how can I? Because there's only so many ideas out there. And it's more how. Who can say the idea in the most interesting or unique way? So I'm always kind of thinking, how could I better communicate what I'm saying? So that's my 2 cents on it.

That's a great point. I mean, you can see the bookshelf behind me. I'd say I don't read all those books, but I buy a lot of books because I want to see. How did you. How are you presenting this? How are you structuring it? And you can read one chapter and be like, oh, okay, I get how you're structuring this. So I totally agree with that. That's a great point.

Yeah. All right, next question. How do you set yourself up for content consumption throughout the week or day? I'll start with mine. I'm. I start every morning with writing. It's. I have a very set morning routine where it starts the night before, where the last thing I do before I go to bed is I write out a question that I want to kind of think about overnight, whether that's what I'm going to write about in the morning or the biggest business problem or whatever it is, personal issue, whatever I'm trying to work through. And I wake up in the morning and I either journal on it if it's something that needs time, or if I'm writing a piece of content, it will be just whatever I thought about overnight. Right. You wake up with an answer when you go to bed thinking about it. So I start the day with writing and then really try not to dig into too much on the content side till the afternoon. Usually when I'm a little bit tired, I'll do some reading. Just kind of pass the time a little bit. But I'm. I think it's all. It all starts with writing and then you read as a necessary. Like, I read with intention for trying to figure out something versus just reading for reading sake.

Yeah, the content consumption thing, it's such an interesting question. It's also the first question we answered too, which is like so much emphasis gets placed on the consumption part. And I think what I try and do, and Dickie, you try and do as well, is, is help people over rotate to focus on the writing, focus on the practicing, you know, because the more you do that, then the more that you're reading and your Consumption, you actually get more out of. But if you're just consuming, consuming, consuming, you're really avoiding the work that needs to happen. And one of my favorite. I think about this seriously probably every day is I remember Lil Wayne, the rapper in, you know, 2007, 2008, when he was just at his absolute height and he had a documentary covering his launch of his third album, which was his biggest album, sold over a million copies in the first week, the Carter 3. And someone asks him, who do you listen to? And he was like, what do you mean, who do I listen to? They're like, what. What other music do you listen to to, like, get inspired and all these stuff? He's like, I, I listen to me, I wake up, I record my songs. I record, I record, I record. And then I take a break, and then I listen to what I recorded so that I can get better. I listen to me. And I've thought about that every day for 10 years. Like, you can consume other people and there's benefit to that. But, like, if you really want to improve, you're the one creating. You're the one listening to yourself. You're the one reading your work. You're the one thinking about how to make it better. You know, I am such a believer. It should be 90% practice, 10% input. And most people think 90% input, 10% practice.

Yeah, the, the bullet point I'll end this with is if you're reading, thinking that once I read enough, then I'll start writing. I think it's just procrastination.

Yeah.

Disguised as research. Right. Oh, I need to read this, this, this, and then I'll start writing. So if you ever find yourself saying, once I blank, then I'll start writing. And I think reading or note taking, whatever it is, is usually top of that list. It's probably a signal that you should just start writing instead.

We need that on a T shirt. Once I. Once I do X, then I'll start writing. Yeah, it never works. You never get there.

I agree. Agree. All right, next one. How do you filter for ideas? How do you know what content to double down on when the numbers aren't super clear cut? So I filter my ideas more or less by personal inspiration. Right. So I have a long list of ideas. And if I. I have just a rule that anytime I want to write about something, I. I don't keep, like a strict log of tomorrow, I'm gonna write about X and then I'm gonna write about Y. It's whatever I want to write about. Always hops to the top. But I just keep a long list. So if I'm ever kind of like, what have I been thinking about recently? I'll start to dig through that.

Yeah, I would say I agree personal feelings are huge. Like, whatever you feel inspired by, follow that. But the other big thing on the data side, because we preach that all the time, is look at the data. The answer reveals itself. What I notice a lot of people do is they look at their data and they go, Well, I wrote 10 things and all of them hover between 100 and 200 views. And the problem is you're kind of lumping it all into one thing when really some of those. The difference between 100 and 200 is double. Right? So even though it might seem like, ah, it's all just small, there actually are data points in there to pay attention to. Or someone goes, this thing only got two likes. This thing only got six likes. Well, no, that's three times bigger. You know, so sometimes even though the data points are really smaller, it seems like they're all hovering in the same range. They. There usually still are insights for you to extract. It just means that you kind of have to look at it and go, oh, that's actually three times more than everything else that I wrote.

Yeah, that goes back to what we talked about where always think in relative terms, right? If you get 2 versus 2 versus 2 versus 6, 300%, just dig into it. Right? It's not, I think where people can get caught up in the data is thinking that the data has to guide them. And instead it's all an option that you should. All it should do is spark curiosity and make you start asking questions of why did this perform better? What could I learn from it versus the data is not telling me what to do. I think if the, if you think the data is not telling you what to do, it means you're not curious enough. You're not asking enough questions based on the performance of certain things.

So that's a great point.

All right, next, what are the best internal metrics to follow to determine whether our writing is improving? So we talk about internal versus external signal. When you're making noise, the internal signal is how easy was it to write? How excited were you to write it? How. How little did you care if anyone ended up reading it because it felt like something you had to say versus the external likes, comments, shares. So for me, I think the internal metrics, the question asked beside just, you know, I was excited to write this. I think that's the most important one. Right. If you find yourself really excited to write about something, you should ask why and what. How else can I change this idea a little bit so that I'm continuing to be excited? Right. The sweet spot is when you're writing something that you're excited about, that everyone wants to read about. You could write for years. If that's the case, you get caught up when maybe the market is saying, oh, we only care about this, and you're not that excited. You need to figure out a way to bring it back to that internal side of actually being excited to write.

Yeah, this. This happened recently, this past week for me. When. Who was it? I just. Microsoft just acquired Blizzard. Activision as a company, and I was a gamer as a teenager, and I found this fascinating, you know, and I really wanted to write about it. I was excited to write about it. That's not my audience. I never. That's not my niche, you know, that's not. Like, the logical side of me is like, this isn't the thread to write, but I was really excited about it and I wanted to write it. And I'm always in favor of trying new data points to see if it resonates with people, you know, And Dickie, you say this all the time, too, and it's a helpful reminder is it's just an option, like, whether it performs well or not. It's not really about that. It's about revealing to you different opportunities that you now consciously can pursue. Pursue or not pursue. That's the whole idea is just you have the conscious choice. So. But the other thing that I'll say with this too is I've had a really hard time over the years tracking or feeling like I'm improving as a writer. It's kind of like watching your hair grow, you know, because it happens, like, in such small increments. And then all of a sudden you go back and you read something six months ago, you're like, what was I doing? You know, so sometimes it's easy to see your growth when you're at it for a while. Then go back and read something you wrote six months ago, or read something you wrote a year ago and then the growth is super apparent to you and you're like, oh, wow, I've been doing the right thing the whole time. But if you're just like, oh, I'm just looking at the thing I wrote yesterday, it's like, watch your hair grow. You're probably not going to notice a difference.

Yeah, it's a great metaphor. I think it's the good. Yeah. It needs to be six months, a year to look back on something, to really notice any kind of improvement. So it goes back to playing the long game and being patient. All right, next one. If we publish the same content in many places, how is Google handling duplicate content? Is that relevant in any way? What do you think, Cole?

No, the thing. This is one of those, you know, if I accomplish nothing else in my life on from the educational side, I hope it's that I just educate people on how writing online actually works. Because the only time duplicate content matters, the only time SEO matters, the only time keywords matter, is when you are playing a very specific game called I'm trying to rank for something on Google. And if you're playing that game, a, you're probably not writing from a passion perspective. You're writing from a business perspective. I want to write about this key phrase to capitalize on this search volume so that I can sell X product. Okay. So if that's already not you, you're not playing that game. Right? And then if you were, okay, how many slots are on the first page of Google? 8. You know, so you're playing a super high competition game focused around keywords, where you're probably competing against other companies that are spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if not tens of millions, trying to rank and own that keyword or that key phrase, right? Like, good luck trying to own productivity when Inc magazine is cranking out 400 columns a day that all have the keyword productivity in them and they're trying to optimize for that. Right? You're never going to win. So because you're not playing that game, duplicate content is irrelevant to you, and you're playing a different game. And all you want is exposure on your work, which means you take your work and you plug it into social ecosystems where there's hundreds of millions of readers and there's a flywheel. A couple people like it, Twitter is going to distribute it to a couple more people. Those people like it, Twitter is going to distribute it to a couple more people. Right? So that's really the biggest thing that we try and educate people on is you are not playing the SEO game. So all those rules are irrelevant to you. They don't matter.

Boom. Nothing to add on that one. I think it's something that it's a red pill of. Once you start and make that realization that you're not playing the SEO game, you stop worrying about posting it a bunch of places, right? That the benefits are gonna 10 times the reward, you know, and it's, it's.

Hard, I like, because people think that they're doing something wrong. Like they almost think of Google like a school teacher. Like, oh, if I, if I don't do it the right way, then the Internet's gonna yell at me. Like, there, there are no rules. You know, at Google is a very specific type of game. So if you're playing that, there's rules to that game, but you're not playing that game, you're playing a different game. Write for yourself.

There we go. All right, last one. How can one niche down in fiction or comedy? This one to me is always a get more specific, right? The more specific you get with your comedy, right. Niching down just means taking the classic things you can do to get more specific. So age, demographic, background, you know, interests, perspective, you know, preference, whatever it is, and just add that level of specificity for whatever it is you're making jokes about. And that is going to resonate with a more specific group.

Yeah. The best example is Dickie. I don't know if you saw that. Did you see the Netflix special, I think it was called Inside with the musical comedian Bo Burnham? Did you, did you see that?

No, I haven't.

Absolute work of art. And so what's his niche? Right? He's. He's not a stand up comic and he's not a musician. He's a musical comic. Right? So anytime you think, first of all, the specificity thing's completely right. Saying how does one niche down in fiction is like saying, how does one niche down in life advice? Like, fiction is giant. There's like hundreds and hundreds of subcategories that fall within fiction, right? Same thing with comedy. Like, you're. Those are massive categories. So one is, how do you get more specific on who this is for? Demographic, what's the problem you're solving? What's the unique interest? You know? And then second is how can you combine unlikely categories, Right? So most people think comedy and music are separate. Bo Burnham goes, I'm gonna combine them, you know, or fiction, it's like made up story. And then like vampires over here or love story and vampires over here. Okay, let's combine them. It's a vampire love story, right? So anytime you can take two things that don't typically go together and smash them together, all of a sudden you have a new niche. So that's, I think, the easiest way to think about it.

Boom. All right, well, that's all we had for this week. If you have other questions, Digital writing related. Be sure to throw them in the next week's Q and A. And that's it. Cole, any parting words?

I think that's it. Give us more questions we'd love to answer.

Yeah, we only had nine this week, so we need some more.

Yeah.

Boom. All right, everyone, have a great. Thanks for listening.