4 years ago, I started writing online.
I gave LinkedIn a chance and posted daily for around 30 days. It was a completely life-changing experience, that led to me receiving amazing opportunities from my profile. It also taught me the most important value of writing online.
Humility
Humility is simply not thinking or behaving in a way that makes you better than others.
People have twisted the meaning of humility to “making ourselves feel lower than we are.” Aka humble bragging (it’s worse than standard bragging).
Humility is understanding that everyone is equal.
It’s acknowledging when it’s time to share what you’ve done and when it’s time to pass the microphone. It goes beyond what you say. It’s how you say it.
Humility has changed my writing game in 3 clear ways:
1. I write to skim
Our attention spans are reducing. Many people do not have the patience to sit through a long blog post. The solution? Writing to skim.
Writing to skim is making your writing readable when someone is scrolling fast on their phone.
- Headings are clear and descriptive
- Text is spaced out well
- Images are used to enhance writing
- Bullet points to share key ideas quickly
- Bold, italics and underlines to grab attention
It’s a format of editing that works well on platforms like Medium. The principles of it can be applied to other writing platforms like Quora or X.
But where does humility come into this?
Simple. Humility is understanding that people consume content for their needs, not mine. It doesn’t matter if my writing is the best thing since sliced bread if it’s formatted in a way that’s hard to read.
When you write with:
- Big chunky paragraphs
- Fluffy words
- Bad formatting
You’re essentially forcing the reader to do more work to read your work online. Not ideal.
Writing to skim is about making the reading experience better. The better the reading experience, the more people will read your stuff.
55% of in-person communication is non-verbal.
The same applies to written communication.
2. I focus on answering the question.
Who remembers when blogposts were actually useful? You could Google something and click on a blog and it would clearly answer your question, without any hassle.
Nowadays, blogposts are ridden with hundreds of keywords and useless bloat, just to play the game of SEO.
Recipe sites are notorious for this. Instead of giving you the recipe for an apple crumble, they go through a whole history of an apple and why apples are amazing. The recipe will be placed somewhere at the very bottom of the page.
Because of this, many of us have to add “reddit” to our google searches to get a clear answer.
With AI taking over the internet, it’s only become more important to be concise and specific in your writing. I don’t like to read blogposts that waffle about things I don’t need to know. I just want the key information and that’s it.
I refuse to add:
- Unnecessary historical information
- Random tangents
- Long fluffy words
To any of my blogposts. Instead, I focus on sharing:
- Actionable advice (using bullet points and numbered lists)
- Clear concepts (keep it simple, stupid)
- Transferable takeaways (insights that apply across domains)
This helps me write articles that are easier to digest.
3. I know what topics I want (and don’t want) to speak on
When writing online, it’s important to know what topics you feel comfortable speaking on and what topics you don’t.
Not every topic requires your online input. Some topics can exist solely for your personal writing that exists offline.
There’s a few topics that I won’t discuss online:
- Politics
- Healthcare
- Finance
However, there’s a lot of topics I will speak on:
- Personal development
- Music composition
- Computer Science
I focus more on the topics I want to talk about and less on the topic I don’t.
It’s so easy to get fixated on the financial gains that come with writing online.
You hear about the people that have made 6-figure businesses writing online and you get very excited, thinking you can do the same.
It’s definitely possible. But I’ve become a lot more wary of those promises, especially as you never know what these people are doing behind closed doors.
You don’t know what people sacrifice and choose to get to where they are. It’s easy to promote a lifestyle by it’s successes whilst conveniently ignoring it’s drawbacks.
Making a living as a writer is a goal of mine. And I want to achieve it through sustainable means that don’t compromise my values. I want to enjoy what I share online without feeling like I’m selling out.
Humility is incredibly important for me on that journey.
I’m considering writing more about building a writing career that isn’t based on the common negative tropes of entrepreneurship (exploitation, taking advantage etc).
I aim to build a writing career that focuses on:
- Building a sustainable personal brand
- Helping and uplifting others
- Making cool money moves
Whilst enjoying the process of building and not some arbitrary endpoint.
So stay tuned to here how that goes.