How to Write Content That Adds Value
When I began writing about the idea of a pivot into academia on Medium last year, it was primarily because I saw a gap in the available resources for people like me. If by some miracle I’m able to pivot out of private sector finance into academia — as a first generation college grad, that did not attend an Ivy or an R1, in my thirties — I want to make this easier for the next person with the audacity to try something like this.
Even if my own pivot fails, maybe something I learn along the way will help the next person succeed.
The first book I read this year was Seth Godin’s The Practice. I picked up the book after hearing Seth give an interview about it on the Afford Anything podcast. Both that discussion and the book offered a term I’ve since been using to describe my Medium writing mission: to add value.
To some extent, I’ve always been concerned with adding value. However, adding value on my personal blog (which is primarily about travel) takes a different form. Often, that form is entertainment. To be clear, I do not think writing for entertainment is somehow less valuable than writing for other purposes. I’ve been blogging for years, and personal stories from travels are still one of my favorite things to read on a travel blog.
But this is not a travel blog.
My Medium publication — The Aspiring Academic — is something new to me: it is not a memoir. While I can convince myself that there may be some value in sharing the process of learning as I go, simply sharing what I’ve learned is generally more valuable to my target audience. If someone attempting an audacious pivot into academia stops by my publication, they are probably as busy as I am trying to find worthwhile resources about academia online. They may or may not enjoy memoirs, but a memoir simply isn’t what they are looking for when they’re trying to find pivot resources.
If creating a valuable resource for audacious aspiring academics really is my goal, I need to change a few things about how I’m writing on Medium.
If you are also interested in adding value with your writing, here are a few tips, thoughts, and ideas from my experience so far.
Your writing should be discoverable.
Write about one topic per post, and clearly identify that topic in the post title.
Since I’ve historically written stories as a travel blogger, I haven’t worried much about search engine optimization (SEO). Personal stories inherently cover a variety of topics, and a descriptive story title isn’t typically something that people are going to search for on Google. Case in point:
While sharing adventure stories with an existing following may be a perfectly defensible value-add for a personal blog, entertainment value simply isn’t the value I’m attempting to offer here on Medium. My publication is new, so the writing is inherently not targeted to an existing following: I don’t have a following yet. This means that my writing needs to be discoverable by readers that are currently unaware of my publication.
Both a clear title and a clear topic help make writing discoverable.
A Clear Title (Supported by Keywords)
A clear title is typically either a line of text you have typed into a search engine or a line of text someone in your target audience would type into a search engine to find your specific post. From our own experience using search engines, we all know how unhelpful vague titles are, so make sure the title of your writing describes exactly what the writing is about. If the title of your post describes your writing accurately, you’ll naturally use keywords that support the title throughout the post. If you are unable to come up with one line of text that describes what your post is about, then the post’s topic probably isn’t clear enough.
A Clear Topic
A clear topic is narrow. This does not mean that your entire publication has to be narrow: I’ve struggled with writing in a narrow niche my entire life, because writing about the same narrow niche every day gets boring. What this does mean is that each post you write should cover one topic. If you tend to write longer posts, you may find yourself covering several topics within a single post. If your goal is to make your content easier to find, consider dividing your initial writing into separate posts based on each topic, or at minimum define the dominant topic of each post (which should be supported by the title and keywords).
Your writing should be valuable.
Write content that would be useful to (past, present, or future) you.
If you’ve mastered the art of keeping posts narrow enough that they cover one clearly-defined topic, summarized by a clear title and keywords, congratulations: you are halfway there.
Adding value with your writing also requires writing about topics that are useful to your target audience… and the ideal target audience is you. While there is an overwhelming amount of advice for writers on the internet that you’ve likely read, telling us all to write about what is trendy or to become an expert in some obscure niche no one else knows anything about simply because it is obscure, I’ve never found either of these methods sustainable. If you are interested in writing long-term, you should write about what you are interested in.
Outside of writing stories about a hobby you love, writing about what you are interested in can take a variety of different forms that add value for your readers. Here are a few ideas:
Write about things you don’t know, but you are in the process of learning. Even if you don’t publish these posts until you learn enough about a topic to write something useful, drafting these posts as you go will help you ensure you don’t forget the things you were curious about at each stage of learning.
Write about things you didn’t know, but you’ve since learned. I find writing these type of posts as soon as possible after learning something helps me remember what I didn’t know when I started learning. This will help you craft a post that adds value for someone brand new to a specific topic.
Write about things you know well, but others may not know. With the prevalence of gurus, coaches, consultants, and experts, this category of writing may be the most common genre online. Even if you have no intention of becoming an online guru, there is something you know very well (through your life, work, or educational experience). Sharing your expertise on that specific topic is a great way to add value.
If you had to use a search engine to compile information from a variety of sources about a certain topic, compiling the knowledge you gained about that topic is a value-add. Help the next person trying to answer the same question as you save the time you spent searching for answers.
Write about things you did wrong. The post you’re currently reading is an example of this value-add category: I started my Medium publication less concerned with adding non-entertainment value for my readers than I should have been, so I’m sharing my ideas to improve going forward.
Write about things you did right. Looking back on your own life, work, or educational experiences, there may be inflection points where you made the right choice. Sharing these choices and how they impacted future endeavors adds value for someone facing a similar choice.
Write advice for your younger self (or a younger person also interested in your topic). Just as you may have made the right choice at certain points, you may also have made the wrong choice (or did something you would do differently knowing what you know now based on additional life, work, or educational experience). Sharing this knowledge with readers is a value-add.
Your writing should be consistent.
Writing regularly increases the value of your writing.
If you find yourself struggling with consistency, consider your approach to writing. I’ve historically approached writing as a hobby, which may be fine for a travel blog… but isn’t a recipe for success here on Medium. Setting aside a specific time to write, the way you set aside a specific time to do other things in your life (like work or school), increases the likelihood that you’ll write consistently. If you have established a time to write in your schedule but you are still having trouble deciding what to write, see if the options in the previous section spark any ideas.
Not only does consistently writing result in more posts you can share, it also increases the quality of your posts. Not every post you write will be discoverable or valuable (as I’ve learned through my experience on Medium so far). However, if each post you write leads to a higher-quality and therefore more valuable post the next time you write, then nothing you are writing is “wasted”. If you focus on establishing a regular writing practice, everything else — including adding value — will come easier.
Additional thoughts on the practice of writing:
