(I originally posted this on LinkedIn—you can read it here)

Hey did I catch your attention?

Well thank god. I was SO worried you wouldn’t notice me!

I’ve got this amazing list that you just have GOT to read and then mayyyyyybe you’ll click click click on my latest link and download my amazing fabulous TOTALLY INCREDIBLE EBOOK GUYS YOU’RE JUST GOING TO LOVE IT!!!!!!

OMG here’s a list of 10,000 things you’re doing WRONG IN YOUR LIFE number 23 is just so cray cray holy —

GUYS!

PAY. ATTENTION. TO. MEEEEEEE!

This Is How I Feel Every Day of My Internet Life… I’m Sure Some of You Can Relate

Every day, I go online and look at content.

Part of it is my job, part of it is an addiction (probably).

No DSM-V code for this one yet, but I digress.

I’m bombarded by lists of things I didn’t know I gave a damn about until I saw them.

Obviously I have to click because hey, I didn’t know those 13 things about Darth Vader that were super duper ultra secret and maybe it will change my life forever if I do.

The irony starts to set in when I mock people who watch television, wasting their lives away in front of a screen.

Obviously I’m superior because I’m reading.

Well, maybe not reading per se — more like scanning, looking for the good bits.

Cause I’m not going to read the whole article — who has time for that? I have 300 more articles to read! And they’re ALL going to change my life.

I generally have to read about 300 articles to find something worth sharing because most of it is crap.

The headline is a lie.

Someone spent hours and hours of their life trying to trick me when all they had to do was write something friggin’ interesting.

If I Have To Rely On A Compelling Headline To Get People To Read My Article, My Content Has Already Failed

If writing is about crafting a compelling, moving, life-changing story, then why in god’s name are people telling me to focus on the damn headline?

And they are telling me that, constantly it seems — the number of articles (and eBooks, and seminars, and webinars, and whitepapers) on how to write a compelling headline is staggering.

Telling me it’s all about the headline is like telling me the most important part of my 300 page novel is the title.

That the most important part of a videogame is the picture on the box.

That the most significant aspect of a movie is the poster selling it.

As if an amazing novel is worthless if it doesn’t suck people in instantly.

As if the actual content of my content is unimportant.

Pointless.

Worthless.

“If nobody clicks and bothers to read, you’re lost in a sea of content — it will disappear and no one will care.”

Ridiculous.

Nobody slogs through Moby Dick because it has a compelling title.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo didn’t become an international sensation because people were ecstatic over the name.

The essays of E.B. White didn’t become the amazing pieces of literature that they are because the title grabbed attention in The New Yorker.

The content is what mattered. The story is what people stayed for (or maybe a bit of whaling action).

This is stupid-corny to say but I’m going to say it anyway — it wasn’t what was on the outside that mattered for these stories: it’s what was on the inside.

That doesn’t magically change on the internet.

Is Your Goal To Get A Bunch of Worthless, Bouncy Clicks, or Is Your Goal to Move People to Action and Actually Make an Impact On Their Lives?

How many times have you clicked on a headline and backed out the second you landed?

Because the content was crap.

And how many more times have you slogged through a swamp of ads to get to the mind-blowing content that you knew waited just on the other side?

I do this constantly. I go for the incredible content 10 times out of 10.

Your headline means shit — if your content is incredible, the headline doesn’t matter.

Nobody gives a damn what the name of the first (fourth) Star Wars was — barely anyone remembers it was called A New Hope.

All they remember is what happened. They remember the characters. They remember the story. They remember that these aren’t the droids they’re looking for and that sandpeople always ride single file to hide their numbers.

They remember Darth Vader.

Great articles are great because they fill you with wonder and joy and a feeling of yes Yes YES THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! Great articles light mental fires. They take residence in my lizard brain and push me to tell others.

They whisper to me while I’m trying to work “go Go GO TELL SOMEBODY ABOUT ME!”

Viral posts don’t need a damn headline — the content is all that matters.

Are you focusing on your content?

Stop Writing Headlines — Start Focusing on a Kickass Story

I’m not saying that headlines are worthless. I’m not saying writing a good headline is a fool’s errand.

If you can bust one out in a minute or two, phenomenal.

But if you can’t — stop stressing about it.

Focus your time on the stuff that really matters: the story itself — because that’s what people care about.

It’s not about clicks — it’s about connecting with another human being.

Because no matter what we’re writing, no matter who we’re writing for, we all need to do one thing:

Connect with our audience.

And a headline isn’t going to do that.

Writing is a terrifying occupation.

It’s terrifying because anything you write can have consequences — from the tiniest tweet to widely-est read white paper, a mistake, a rude comment, or a blatant lie can get you in a great deal of trouble.

I’ve spent hours sweating over a two-paragraph email, cringed in anxiety before posting a tweet, and wondered about my life choices before publishing a blog post with a curse word in it.

I was letting fear control me — and my resulting content was the stuff you read at 5am when sleep isn’t happening and you’re all out of links to click.

Fear was stifling me — and I had no one to blame but myself.

Fear stifles our thinking and actions — Charles Stanley

Ole’ Charles was on point when he wrote this one.

As long as I let the fear flow through me, I bottled up my realness, locked away my genuine thoughts, and made my business writing as austere, bland, and corporate as I possibly could.

I avoided even a hint of originality (which could possibly get me in trouble), and I consistently churned out writing that was safe, unoffensive, and gagging-ly boring.

But more importantly, it wasn’t being read.

Every Day, People Are Being Smashed In The Face With Content — If You Can’t Do Them The Courtesy Of Pouring Your Heart Into Your Writing, Why The Hell Should They Read It?

When I wrote with fear freezing my fingers, when I tried to comport my writing public-wise, my writing was crap dear brothers.

I’m not saying it’s incredible today — but it doesn’t look like a corporate robot built it out of an algorithm.

I only did one thing differently: I started being earnest in my writing.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Except it’s not the world trying to make me something else — it’s me.

I am my own worst writing enemy — I censor myself. I see a beautiful idea and I say, “NO! Get down! That looks troublesome! What would your mother think?!”

Back then, in the before time, I wrote like a robot, and nobody read it.

Once I started writing less like HAL 8000 and more like myself, my writing improved. I started filling my writing with the random, obscure pop culture references that invade my speech. I started throwing in a random curse word or two. I started being real.

I stopped writing like something I wasn’t (I won’t say someone because, truly, it sounded like an alien wrote it).

I started being me.

And that was scary. Hell, it’s still scary. But it’s working. My content is being shared more, commented on more, and read more.

And I’m having way more fun writing it.

Incredible Content Is Exciting Because The Subject Matter Excites You, But That Excitement Fades — Meaningful Content Is Long Lasting Because It Sparks Something Inside You

And the content that means the most to me — that sparked something inside of me and made its way to my bookshelf or desktop — that content came from the creator’s heart.

Not their head.

They didn’t worry about sounding good or pissing someone off or getting in trouble — they wrote something real.

When you write in any marketing capacity, you have got to connect with people. Big brands spend millions of dollars to come up with the perfect piece of content to share.

Few of us have that budget, but we have something the big brands would pay billions of dollars for, that they would do anything to have.

We have ourselves. We have a story that matters to someone. We have a voice that inspires people. We are real, we are human, and we can share who we are — something the big brands can only dream of.

And when we create true content marketing — marketing not meant to get a sale or a lead or a click but to actually help someone — it has got to come from the heart.

Write something real, and your customers will connect.

Don’t let the fear keep you from impacting someone’s life.

(I originally posted this on LinkedIn — you can read it here)