Stand Out as a Content Creator with these 5 Factors

A simple Roadmap to becoming a successful Content Creator

If you’re a Content Creator or aspire to become one, I’d love to shower you with tactics, habits, and skills that would help you stand out as a Content Creator among millions of others out there.

But before we ride along, don’t forget to bring your “passion” along — the reason behind you becoming a content creator.

You must have heard about “burnouts” among people. Well, I’d say Content Creators and Burnouts share an intimate relationship when either of them loses their cool over the other.

This blog post lists down methods that’ll help you avoid burnout, create content regularly, stay passionate and focused, and adapt to a productive lifestyle to produce quality content regularly.

So let's start with the basics.

Who is a Content Creator?

A person who creates content, be it in the form of videos, blogs, podcasts or any other format is known as a content creator.

Examples :

• A YouTuber

• A Blogger on Medium, like me :)

• An ebook, digital planner, workbooks, graphic templates or newsletter creator.

• Social Media influencer

And the neverending list goes on.

They are everywhere around you. In fact, right now, content creators are in great demand.

But, here’s the deal. Since you’re reading this blog, I’m pretty sure you’re more interested in being a content creator than a content consumer right?

So, let’s look at why someone would want to become a content creator in the first place.

Why become a Content Creator?

They love creating content. That simple and straightforward? Not really.

Such creators possess secret agendas that drive them towards producing content to get more views, leads, or sales. I’ll list a few of them below :

• Passion: The word that’s powerful enough to make a creator chew their content and spit it out in multiple directions, making them money from each of them.

Yes. That’s the power of a “passion” driven content creator. And Passion doesn’t come cheap.

Luckily, you won’t need to purchase passion, you can manufacture it by asking yourself a simple question.

“What do I like to do?”

An answer to this question can set your passion mechanism to churn unlimited content whenever and wherever you want.

But, here's something you should know about passion. Not every passion project can make you money, okay?

There’s something that you’ll need to start doing to monetize your passion. But more on that later below.

The next agenda is pretty attractive.

• Attention: This one factor has driven several content creators crazy over time.

“Attention” is the currency most content creators use to purchase authority.

Nothing’s wrong with that. But, there’s a boundary. Some misuse it and others use it smartly.

Those who misuse it easily push themselves into a pitfall from which they never recover. Others who use it smartly can make themselves and their audience happy. In fact, even make money.

The next agenda makes creators feel powerful.

• Authority: Creating content that brings value to someone’s life might end up making the creator feel authoritative.

And, there’s nothing wrong with that. All the comments, likes, and shares that content creators get on social media sites help them establish their authority.

And content consumers look up to such authoritative creators to gain more knowledge, insights, or skills.

• Making Money: One of the major reasons for people to start becoming content creators is to start making money out of their content.

Guess who helps creators make money? Content platforms.

YouTube, Medium, Quora, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram are just some of the popular ones.

Look at creators such as PewDiPie and Mr. Beast.

As a creator, you can promote affiliates or your digital products on such platforms, or become a part of specific partnership programs and leverage traction to make money off of your content.

Now that I’ve covered the agendas behind a creator’s scarlet secrets to creating content, let's step right into the factors that will help a content creator such as yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd.

5 Proven Factors that make Content Creators Stand Out amongst others

Every content creator has their own journey. But, here’s the hard part, not everyone makes it through.

There are over millions of content pieces launched every day. But, not every content piece gets ranked on the first page of Google, gets thousands of likes and shares instantly, or makes creators money every day.

Some creators give up early, some lose interest in creating content, some get demotivated by noticing undesirable results, and then there are others who hit 6–7 figures creating content single-handedly.

Let’s see how you can stand out as a creator and avoid the pitfalls of content creation :

1. Consistency

An infamous term, “Consistency” is quite a celebrity when it comes to creators. They want her, desperately.

And so will you if you're planning to create content on a long-term basis.

Here’s something you might've heard people say. “Consistency doesn't mean you'll need to produce content daily.”

I disagree. Yes, consistency doesn't require you to produce content daily, but here's how creating content daily helps :

It seasons you as a creator in the long game. You’ll be able to brainstorm new ideas spontaneously, you won't lose the knack for creating content regularly as you're doing it daily, and you’ll have a better understanding of what’s working in the market and what’s not.

But you won’t need to keep creating content daily for ages. The first month or two is more than enough for you to grasp what’s working, how you’ll approach your audience, trigger their pain points and ultimately convert them into leads.

Then, once you have an idea of how everything works, you can take your content creation process easy and produce content 2x-3x per week. Up to you.

A few days of daily hard work and you’ll find yourself all comfy on the content couch, whilst sipping regular wine.

That’s “consistency” for me. What’s your definition of consistency? Comment below.

Example: You’ll Neil Patel, an expert Digital Marketer, talking about how he grew his YouTube channel to 10k subscribers within 8 months.

He kept creating content daily for the first few days making him around 8.5k subs within the first 4 months itself.

Now, let's look at how Market Research helps you become a better content creator.

2. In-Depth Market Research

Creating content daily without having any idea of what’s working out in your niche market can backfire on your content creation process.

Here are 2 major consequences :

• Low or Zero Content Visibility

• Low or Negligible Engagement Rate

This will result in you being pushed down the rabbit hole where it ends with — “I’m giving up”.

Don’t let yourself go down that hole. You’ll easily find the resources for your market research anywhere you look on the Internet.

Clueless regarding how to conduct market research for your niche-based content?

Here’s a list of 4 Free platforms to get you grooving with research :

• Google Trends: Lets you access trend analytics of a keyword on Google search engine. Filters such as location and time help niche down your research.

• BuzzSumo: Displays social share stats of a content topic on Facebook and Twitter. Helps with creating content around a topic that’s trending on social sites.

• AnswerThePublic: A tool that provides you with tons of keywords that are being searched on Google.

• Quora: A question and answer platform that helps the kind of questions that people are asking along with questions that rank on Google.

Start with either of the platforms listed above and get your market research on track.

Now that we’ve covered market research, what do you think is the next factor that’ll help you serve your audience?

3. Identifying Pain Points

With tons of content out there, most creators fail to identify what their audience suffers from.

The best way to get around the roadblock of creating content that doesn’t resonate with your audience is by identifying their problems first and providing the solution next.

But, how do you find their pain point as a creator?

Here’s a list of 3 platforms that I use to pinpoint issues faced by my audience.

• Quora

• Reddit

• Amazon Reviews

There are plenty of resources out on the internet to help you find answers to their pain points.

Next, what’s the most important factor that boosts your visibility as a personal brand?

Engagement

Something I’ve seen several industry experts talk about. Without engagement, you’ll find it hard to win over your audience.

Creating value-driven content is one thing, and dropping an insightful comment on others’ content is another.

Make sure you do both. Be it a takeaway in the form of a comment on someone’s LinkedIn post or a reply to someone who commented on one of your YouTube videos, people appreciate the engagement.

Guess how? Not only are you visible to the person whose content you commented on, but to others engaging with the content as well.

Social Media sites are a powerful source of engagement. The more you engage, the faster your audience grows.

Two simple ways to engage on social media :

• Comment on the content piece produced by a person relevant to your industry.

• Connect with a certain number of new people every day.

The ultimate goal of engagement is to make yourself visible, as much as you can.

Productive Lifestyle

Enough of work-related discussion.

Always remember that a healthy mind produces healthy content.

I led a disorganised lifestyle prior to becoming a writer. Late nights, unending gaming sessions, and lazy evenings ruined my lifestyle back then.

I started with reading books, then hitting the gym, attending webinars and workshops, and buying courses to keep myself busy and lifestyle productive.

Take care of yourself, your mind, and your body. Go for a morning walk, hit the gym, read books, go for vacations or meditate. Do what you like.

Quality content doesn't demand you to put 24x7 every day. Start with scheduling your time behind the content.

Tools such as Trello, Notion, ClickUp, and Evernote unburden our thoughts by letting us jot our tasks digitally.

Trust me, time management will exponentially help you in the long run of content creation.

Maintaining a specific time to create content in a day helps you avoid burnout and stress.

My Final Thoughts

A few days back, I started my own 30-Days LinkedIn Sprint. I took up this challenge to help myself brainstorm new ideas, repurpose them later and provide value on LinkedIn, daily.

Nothing can stop you from becoming a successful content creator if you adopt a smart way of creating content.

Don’t expect overnight success. Standing out among several others isn't impossible, several give up midway, which makes it a little easier for you to surpass several others.

What’s that one thing that drives you to create content regularly? Comment your answer below.