Image Credit: Pixabay
By: Amanda Drum
“Content.” The blogging buzzword of 2017 has come to refer to a means to an end, rather than the original creation. Many influencers post content to earn clicks. Writers post content to gain readers. Businesses post content to funnel sales. With this driver mentality, we lose ourselves in analytics and end gains. We forget the most important part of creating content: its message.
Enter “minimalism.”
Why minimalism? ‘Minimizing’ your content means distilling the content to its core purpose: sending a clear message. This message can be a lesson, a useful product, or a new idea. Regardless, posting content with purpose and meaning is far more beneficial than writing fluff stuffed with advertisements or incentives, clearly vehicles to bait consumers into a purchase or “like.”
Joshua Fields Millburn, one of two members of the minimalist messengers The Minimalists, puts it this way (bolded mine): “Avoid content in favor of meaningful creations. Content is nebulous; important creations align with values.” He illustrates that it may serve the ‘content creator’ to think of their content first and foremost as a purposeful creation. A work of art.
On The Minimalists, Millburn publishes audience-serving posts “minimalist” in every way except their clear message. Among his most popular posts includes Killing Home Internet is the Most Productive Thing I’ve Ever Done. You can read on if you wish, but the title summarizes the article in one breath.
To start, Millburn states his point. He expands his assertion with counter-arguments. He concludes his essay with value for the reader: how they can kill the internet in their own home if they want. He trims his words to key topics, questions and answers, and leaves readers with strong takeaways.
This should sound like an elementary age 5-paragraph essay lesson. Strong, clever, business-professional writing can still return to basics, stripped of distractions and plugins (often pre-meditated to generate SEO), to make its useful message clear. And why does Millburn write in the first place? Not to gain revenue for himself–he commonly quips that “Advertisements suck”–but to provide direction for others who enjoy the minimalist lifestyle. By prioritizing giving back and adding value, he cultivates a blog with his business partner, Ryan Nicodemus, that reaches millions of readers per month. Readers return because they trust The Minimalists have their best interests at heart.
Where are the bad examples? Turn to social media. Where everyone has a platform, opportunities for sales, shallow content and content posted for consistency’s sake run rampant. Offenders tend to be:
- Content created only to shill products for the highest advertising bidder
- Content laden with outbound links and banner ads in bulk, whose sites become income mills more than homes for content
- Creators that create frequent low-quality, low-value content, rather than less-frequent, high-value content
Creators consumed with pulling in a quick ROI often fall victim to these traps. These creators should question the value of their content, and if they’re creating content for the right reasons.
A creation with clear value-add for an audience is far more important than the leads it may generate for the creator. Or, it should be, if the creator cares more about their audience than themselves. By pouring energy into creating truly useful content, the ‘lead’ creators constantly hound will be gained by proxy. Honest content with strong values is the content most likely to secure a dedicated and trusting audience of readers or viewers.
If the sole purpose of your content is to wrangle an audience toward a website or a sale, it shouldn’t be posted at all. The purpose of content is to share a beneficial creation. And, abiding by minimalism, that’s all it should be.