"anticipated content": do people 'look forward' to you?

[“Last Words”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]

A nice little exchange I had with Beth on Twitter this morning got me thinking…

It was simple enough. Beth just said that she liked this morning’s newsletter cartoon.

I thanked her for her kind words, and said that the daily cartoon these days was my favorite part of the job; it’s the thing I would give up doing last [That’s true, by the way].

She replied, “Good to know, because I look forward to them and just bought [the print,] ‘Last Words’ 🙂 ”

I thanked her again for supporting my business, as one should…

But then afterwards, I was thinking about what Beth said: “I look forward to them”…

I read a lot of blogs, I follow a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook, as a lot of y’all do as well.

So we know a lot people online, we like a lot of people, we think they’re cool enough- cool enough to follow, anyway [N.B. I’m not really talking about friends and family here. I’m talking more about people that create “content” about stuff we have an intellectual or professional interest in.].

But ask yourself, of all these people that occupy your “content cloud”, how many are actually creating content that you actually look forward to receiving? Content that is ANTICIPATED?

Sure, I have a lot of people in my bookmarks that I read regularly- I like them, I like what they say and I think they’re interesting.

But how many of them are actually writing content that I consciously look forward to receiving, in advance? How many people do I actually follow religiously?

A tiny, TINY fraction of them.

Does your content create that same feeling of anticipation for other people? “I look forward to it.” Do people look forward to your stuff the same way I look forward to reading say, Clay Shirky or Mark Earls?

If not, don’t you think it should? Don’t you think you’d be far more successful if it did?

“I look forward to it.” That is the money shot. And you’re either doing it, or you’re not.

Something to think about…

[P.S. Ken Peters sums it up nicely: “If your content isn’t anticipated, it just becomes noise.”]

[P.S. Thanks to Beth once again, this time for getting me to put my thinking cap on…]