Welcome to the Creativity Business, a newsletter about earning attention and differentiating yourself as a marketer or content creator. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up and get content & differentiation strategy delivered to your inbox every two weeks for free.
It feels like an algorithm is trying to tell me to beware of algorithms.
I keep getting the same message delivered in different ways. It’s almost like some universal algorithm is saying, “Hmmmm, sounds like you might be thinking about algorithms for marketers and content creators!”
This is the message I already know very well, but it keeps popping to the forefront: don’t chase algorithms.
Algorithm Message #1
“Attention becomes the only metric by which culture is judged, and what gets attention is dictated by equations developed by Silicon Valley engineers…” Kyle Chayka, Filterworld.
I’ve been reading the wonderful book Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. It describes how our culture is being flattened by the ubiquity of algorithmic content feeds and recommendations. Whether it’s TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Google News, Google search results, your Netflix menus, or Amazon, algorithms drive the vast majority of our content consumption, purchasing decisions, and news and information.
The algorithms are deeply held trade secrets, and they keep changing. Hoards of marketers, strategists, and creators attempt to determine what the algorithms reward in order to game them and gain access to massive swaths of algorithmic traffic. You can regularly see certain types of content trend as legions of marketers and creators copy something that went viral in an attempt to replicate it.
“Under algorithmic feeds, the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible.” Kyle Chayka, Filterworld
Every time people figure out how to game the algorithm, the people who own the algorithm change it. It’s a never-ending and deeply depressing game of whack-a-mole with the manipulation of our attention as the cherished grand prize.
Algorithm Message #2
I recently read Traffic by Ben Smith. It brilliantly documents the rise of Gawker, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, the Huffington Post, and other sites that relentlessly tried to reverse engineer content that simlutaneously pleased humans, search engines, and social media algorithms. It’s filled with tales of how and why different types of content went viral at particular stages of the internet’s evolution.
Reading these stories in Traffic gave me a flashback to an earlier period of my career. Many years ago when I was working at CBC Radio 3, there was an edict from HQ to aggressively generate more web traffic so that CBC could serve more ads and make more money… or else there would be budget cuts. And so we jumped into a period of chasing page views and clicks, just like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, and everyone else at the time.
We published loads and loads of photo gallery listicles (Top Ten Canadian Country Album Covers of All Time! Top 25 Hallowe’en Songs of All Time! Top 100 Canadian Songs of All Time!). Every time you clicked to the next slide in the photo gallery, a new page view was tallied and a new display ad unit was served. We had some really clever and talented writers and designers and it worked quite well… at delivering page views and ad impressions.
Did it also work well at delivering results for supporting independent Canadian musicians, which is the entire reason CBC Radio 3 existed? Not as well as other strategies we could have employed, but those wouldn’t have delivered the ad impressions.
The ultimate takeaway from Traffic and the CBC Radio 3 clickbait era is, again, that the algorithms keep changing and that the owners of those algorithms are capricious and sometimes vengeful. It’s hard to build a business on someone else’s algorithms.
It’s also easy to lose your way. When you’re chasing ever-evolving algorithms, you veer off your own path. Your vision and purpose can get muddied very quickly. How are you supposed to find your voice if you cater to the algorithm instead of the people you’re seeking to reach?
Content strategist, podcaster, speaker, and educator Jay Acunzo nailed it beautifully on Threads recently:
“The best choice I ever made when I became an independent creator, I made by accident:
I built a business where revenue growth and audience growth are not directly linked. I can have a banner year without growing my audience much at all.
When your fate is linked to search traffic and social followers, you’re basically an unpaid intern for big tech companies now.
No thanks.”
Algorithm Message #3
An algorithm delivered this to me, but I love it anyway :-) Check out Tom Brady talking about what success looks like in football and in life. And I watched this, I could not help but map this exact same message to marketing and content strategy.
Chasing algorithms is searching for shortcuts. The better path to success is hard work over time.
"To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus."
Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller
Algorithm Message #4
I’ve recently started posting fun little videos on TikTok and Instagram. They are short form comedy bits in the form of a fake documentary about marketing my book. There are fake book marketers, a fake agent, a fake social media coach, and more to come.
Since I began producing them, I’ve become fascinated by what type of social video content works, what length of videos work, and why the same video performs differently on one platform versus another. One of the videos, which features my son, suddenly got over 21,000 views on TikTok.
I was telling my friend Dan Misener about it this week and wondered whether my son was the reason the video got so many views - maybe the algorithm priorities youth over middle-aged dads and I should feature my son in every video, I joked. Dan asked me if I’m chasing the algorithm. His question stopped me in my tracks. Was I? I honestly had a brief moment of panic at the thought.
As I talked it through with Dan, the panic subsided as I confirmed that I am absolutely not chasing the algorithm, even though I continue to be curious about anomalies and outliers.
Here’s the crux of it for me…
The Alternative to Chasing Algorithms
You have to play to the strength of each medium you’re working in. If you’re making a podcast, you’d better produce shows that play to the strengths of on-demand audio. If you’re making TikToks, you’d better produce videos that play to the strengths of a short-form video platform.
To earn attention, you need to make awesome, mind-blowing stuff on a regular basis. And part of that is understanding how different media and platforms work. Designing content specifically around the unique traits of a platform is not chasing the algorithm - it’s smart content strategy. And you should pay attention to the unique data and metrics you get from each platform to see what you can learn.
When you chase algorithms, you don’t actually have a content strategy. You’re adapting your strategy to fit whatever the amorphous, always-in-flux algorithm wants. You are constantly trying to please a fickle emperor whose unpredictable whims leave you guessing. And guessing. And guessing.
The alternate path is to focus on creating enormous value for your chosen audience.
Don’t chase algorithms. Instead…
Chase great work.
Offer something original.
Generously create things worth consuming.
Value the time of others.
Have a clear idea of who you are trying to reach.
Be consistently awesome over time.
The same lesson applies whether you are a content creator, a marketer, or an entrepreneur posting thought leadership on LinkedIn.
If you succeed in earning attention, building trust, and fostering new relationships because you’re consistently and generously creating enormous value, you don’t need the algorithm. You need patience. The people you are seeking to reach will tell each other about it.
What’s Earned My Attention Recently
“Attention isn't free. It's the most valuable thing you spend.”
Shane Parrish, Farnham StreetTikTok continues to disrupt the book industry. A fascinating story about a self-published author writing a huge best seller with savvy TikTok marketing.
On the positive side of algorithms…. the algorithm has been continually feeding me this song from a group of kids in Cork, Ireland… and I kinda love it. Enjoy!
Earn It Updates
Thanks to Shawn Conner at The Helm for talking with me about thought-leadership content strategy.
I’m recording the audiobook for Earn It this week and my brilliant friends Pedro Mendes and Gaetan Harris are planning a lot of non-traditional audiobook fun in the production. I can’t wait!
New videos from Gary & Perry (my fake book marketers) about their origins and missteps in the children’s book industry.
I’m very grateful for this wonderful new testimonial from Tamsen Webster this week:
“How much do I love this book? Let me count the ways... Suffice to say, this book gives you the roadmap for making your content deliver on your dreams for it. Is it going to be easy? No—you'll have to Earn It, just like the title says. Common approaches create commodity content, after all. But if you're interested in creating content that captures people's hearts, heads, eyes, and ears, that's a craft, and there's no one better than Steve and this book, to teach you."
Tamsen Webster, Founder, Message Design Institute [and author of Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible]
If you’d like to know more and/or pre-order the book, here’s the home base for Earn It.