Stop making "content" 🤮

Scrolltown is my series about helping cultural and community organisations create more colourful, scroll-stopping content.

And therein lies the problem.

Content.

If you want to see hate in the eyes of a truly creative person, call what they make “content”.

Content. It’s like describing a delicious and nutritious meal as “feed”.

When you start seeing what you make – even if it’s something like this that isn’t artistic but is intended to help people – as “content”, it becomes so much easier for it to become bland and uninspiring… like one of those “protein powders” that promises weight loss because basically it doesn’t contain any actual food.

Instead of thinking about creating “content”, think about what it is you want to make today. Is it an image? A video? Some audio? Or is what you want to say best expressed in text?

It doesn’t have to be a piece of high art, and it doesn’t even have to be exceptional. It just has to be more than “feed”. Ideally it should say something other than “Please do the thing we want you to do” (come to our venue, give us your email address, download our thing), and show something of your personality.

So the next time you’re thinking “I guess I should put out some content”, stop and have a think about what you want to say, what the best medium for that might be, and how you can brighten someone’s day with it, even if they don’t take the action you were hoping for.

Speaking of action, if you liked this and found it useful, consider sharing it with a friend.

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