Four things about creativity and “making content"

As an aside I hate* the word “content.” Passionately.

There are a lot of heated and (honestly) wrong takes going around about TikTok in light of the House passing a bill to effectively ban TikTok absent a spin or sale. A few things—none are new, but each is appropriate today about content creation and creativity in general.

One and two are fundamentally critical to anyone engaged in the act of creation. Three and four are downright existential threats to anyone who wants to make creating content online part of their living—solo creators or on behalf of brands.

1. If content and creation is your business, understand who your content’s distribution depends on. Not a new argument that social media is rented space. No platform you’re going to post to is going to sustain its popularity or last forever, so treat them like weight machines at a gym: practice, grow, and constantly re-evaluate/cycle between them.
2. Own your destiny. If you are serious about this work to the point that you are making supplemental income—regardless of your medium—you need to own a space that is not part of your social media portfolio. Bare minimum, buy a domain name and email. Forward it to your Gmail if you want, doesn’t matter. Give folks a way finding you that is not beholden to profiles that have no guarantee of being discoverable.
3. Stay engaged. I’m not talking about your own community on social media. You need to understand how the companies who own this space are moving, how the broader world around you is thinking about that industry and how those attitudes might shape the next set of changes. It is fundamentally not enough to stick to what others are saying on LinkedIn, on industry blogs, you need to be listening and looking for perspective outside your experience, outside your community. Truly great content doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it can’t really be created in one either (sorry, AI).
4. Getting involved and staying involved is better than “taking action.” Maybe you called your senator today to remind them to support small businesses and creators online. You did a good thing—let me be clear—but making your voice heard once isn’t participating in the conversation. The national security concerns Congress has around TikTok is just one challenge that’s facing creators today. What are you doing to further the conversation with leaders and/or foster more community/support for and among creators?