Why professionals should create content?

Part 1 covers why you need to create content if you work remotely for a large or medium-sized company.

Part 2 covers the need for professionals to create content to thrive in another 5–10 years.

Let’s go!

How many times has someone told you “Oh, I had no idea that you were working on this project,” I think that you should really meet this person” and that introduction changes the course of your project? Can this serendipitous occurrence be amplified if you could choose to be vulnerable?

Putting content in public = Exposing your vulnerability and taking responsibility for your thought.

This can either scare you or delight you.

The gigs are coming, Master Wayne. Other than the top 1 percentile jobs, Most job payouts are stagnating over the years.

The way I see it, over the next 10–15 years, a large majority of the jobs will be given out to freelancers. The only high-value jobs will be of the top folks(+engineering team maybe?) working closely with the CEO/founders who will be helping execute the vision of the entrepreneur. (This list does not include the .1 percentile companies such as the Amazons and the Flipkarts of the world). Now in such a world, you need a brand. You need a hook to be identified. In a world where physical proximity will recede as a point of leverage, What’s your hook?

Let’s put this aside for now. I Will address this more in part 2 of my article.

Part 1

Why do you still need a brand?

Who are you? What do the coworkers know about you? If you are working remotely in a company of more than 50 people chances are that you know about 5–10 people well enough and that’s it. For the rest, you are reduced to a designation and a static zoom picture (What kind of evil are you if you switch video on during zoom calls anyways?)

Now before your 1 on 1 zoom catchup call, you will be stalked and your Facebook will be checked. Yes. Does anyone actually ever live up to their Instagram persona anyway?

In the past, you would go out for drinks and coffee breaks with your coworkers and learn so much about each other. Now, it’s just evil to have a “chai and catchup compulsory zoom sessions at 5 pm every week”. With remote work, just like work is becoming more asynchronous (happening with lag time due to variations in work timing), so is learning and knowing more about each other.

So the days of knowing more about your coworker’s deep thoughts on how they approach life that would usually happen at your nearest watering hole which would be in the interest of “increasing inter-department productivity” is on the decline. Your spoken and written word published online will be tasted more frequently and this moment can be an infinite point of leverage or doom. Yes. I say it again. You can easily make a fool of yourself as well, as once online, it’s always online. Hmm, that’s a bit dark.

What does your online persona speak about you to someone who has recently joined your team and has never met you? Do you think that it’s important? Would they really trust the few warm-cold smattering of text on Slack saying “ Hi! I love people and traveling. I love new things. Let me help you ❤ “ It will be interesting to see what works best.

Part 2

Other, CRITICAL reasons for a personal brand?

Creating content in my eyes is like productizing your life experiences or thoughts into an asset that is able to speak for you even while you sleep.

Value from such assets while not (always) monetary in nature can and will have far-reaching effects on your future career/business growth and at the very least is a great way of keeping in touch with yourself as the process itself pushes you to think and become more aware of yourself and the work that you are doing.

How assets make money work for you when you sleep, high-quality content does the same. Make content work for you.

Some of the key upsides of creating content around your own personal brand are as follows -

• Potential for Exponential reach — Naval might not respond to your personal appeals for a meeting but a product pitch well integrated into your personal content could sure go a long way. I know so many who managed to grab new job offers because of an article or video that caught the recruiters’ attention.
• Own your Media perception — Gone are the days when you needed to wait to be successful enough to be on the cover of Forbes(Hell that’s awesome too but not the only way to let the world know about your arrival)
• Own your distribution and beta market — You will be able to hire, raise funds, take feedback, get initial traction and stay motivated to an exponentially greater extent simply because of an engaged audience (Phew do I even need to go on?)
• Solve your work problems — With an engaged audience or community, if you are facing work issues or need new ideas, an audience that you can take advice from is invaluable. That’s where the magic happens folks!

Downsides — Making a fool out of yourself is a fairly high possibility. But then high risk, high reward.

Before the meeting starts, what would you want the person in front of you to already know about you?

When you meet someone for the first time unless you have already hit it big you would get limited time to talk. However, the time to build your brand before and after the meeting is limitless.

We spend so much time preparing for the meeting and what to say during the same, however negligible time is spent thinking about and optimizing for the pre and post-contact period. Your personal brand will play an equally important role in closing a deal or pushing a project in many instances.

The list of benefits can sure go on. I can feel the effects of my Iced Latte wear off. So stopping here.

Bonus content: FAQ, for those who managed to come this far.

If you cant code, build! But what?

I started with this one question, What is the one topic that you can write, read more about than 99 percentile of the population, and could potentially simplify for the world?

Go ahead and do that for a month and you will find your escape velocity to go 0 to 1.

How do you create content without friction: The flywheel effect. I will write a separate article on this. But for now, think of things that you can do on a daily basis that feed into your life in a manner that is frictionless and adds value to your professional and personal life.

Build-in public. It’s anyways the new mantra of the startup world.

Join me on this journey while I learn and explore more on this topic. 🙂