High Quality Content Will Always Be Found, Growth Hacks Help It Get Discovered Faster

There’s a common saying that artists need to focus on making great art and it will inevitably get discovered.

They neglect to mention that sometimes that won’t happen when you are alive. The idea is if you simply produce good quality content, your audience will appear over time, fan by fan. Consistent production over time equals growth.

I’ve been slowly releasing different kinds of content for over a decade. 

Evidently the quality isn’t good enough yet, or I haven’t produced enough of it to hit the catalyst point.

I’m not trying to downplay what I’ve done. I’ve got quite a few fans and people that support my creative outlets. It could also be said I’ve yet to find the missing sauce of mastery to take me over the edge.

Or the quality is good, and without some kind of help I’m destined to be recognized after I die. Frankly, it’s more likely I will end up forgotten among the millions of other talented folk who never made it.

Then again, most people who made it while alive used growth hacks to optimize for success.

Succeeding on social media is formulaic

The first time I really tried on my own social media was with my vlog series.

When I stopped 37 episodes in (I have like 5 to release sitting there) people actually asked me where it went. I was clearly onto something and then life derailed my consistency. I was finally focusing on some content people cared about.

I bring that up because sometimes I talk about the theoreticals, without the proof on my pages. It’s not that I can’t do it for myself, my experience lies more in content strategy and creating outlines other people executed. Next year I plan on going full content mode and doing it right, today I dabble. 

Anyway here’s your basic breakdown:

• Hook - 3 second grab, highlight reel or some other engaging thing that draws people in. This is your headline, like you are a newspaper.

• Content - This is the specific idea/challenge/thing you are covering in your video. In a perfect world your videos are focused. My vlog videos were a day in my life, that was the focus, when I rant, that topic is the focus. 

• CTA - When you are done, tell them to do something. By default it could be to subscribe and follow. It could also be a push for something else, but people need some direction.

Keep in mind that is a basic breakdown, there are clearly other content types that break this formula, such as:

• Infinity Loops - Those videos where the ending ties perfectly into the hook, creating a loop. This gets you to accidentally watch it a couple more times than intended. 

• Challenges - Let’s be honest they just kind of start and end based on the challenge

Still when you want to succeed, you need to look at what is succeeding. 

Another way to look at it, growth hacking done right is really just embracing mastery.

Good art always had great marketing behind it

One of the most vivid scenes of old timey art capitalism I saw play out was in the TV series Borgia.

At one point Cesare Borgia and Leonardo DaVinci are gallivanting around. Leo was on some war machine energy and Cesare was conquesting. High key Cesare was Leo’s art sugar daddy for a while.

While the show is fiction, it’s based on some reality,

When I Googled I said, oh snap they really did galavant around together.

Cesare Borgia was in fact DaVinci’s art sugar daddy. 

Anyway, Michelangelo and DaVinci are in this area competing for a bid on the statue we would come to know as David. They are slinging mud and talking wild shit, flexing on how they deserve the gig. Both had worked real hard to market their brands to a point where they would be considered for the real deal money.

Both these dudes were geniuses. Yet Michelangelo gets the David job and DaVinci does not.

You often hear about the glory days where apparently people just were rewarded for doing things. The more I delve into history, the more I see it’s always kind of been the better growth hacks win. He who makes the most noise, the most eloquently, gets to chisel one of the world’s most famous penises. 

The greatest people of all time understand that organic experiences are socially engineered.

To create quality organic content you need to optimize for what works

People hear terms like optimize and equate that to selling out.

Or free. 

Organic is not the opposite of paid marketing in a way where it’s free. 

In reality changing who you are to appease others is not optimizing content. That is just selling out and given how fake our world is, nobody needs it. Optimizing is about taking what you do and improving it based on known techniques.

The 3 second hook applies for short form video content. 

You can try to work around it, but if you can implement the hook into what you already do, your content will perform better. 

The more you get feedback (numbers + comments), the better information you have to achieve mastery. 

Anyone can produce a good song, or a quality video. To create something that transcends the noise requires understanding what works. You need to study how other people break through the noise.

I highly recommend Set Godin, Chris Do & Scott Galloway as people to look to for marketing insight. The content they produce will introduce you to a world of mastery you never conceived before. Once you get the theory down, go study the content in real life environments.

See what performs, and what doesn’t. It’s your new mission to steal the best possible techniques you can incorporate into your existing foundation. Remember you aren’t trying to replace what you do, but to build on it. 

Don’t be afraid of doing growth hacky or trending stuff. 

Best case scenario it works and you get more success. 

Worst case scenario is that you lose a few hours. 

No biggie.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone