Over the past year and a half, I’ve blogged every day. It’s been a very good experience and it has been especially valuable in creating a daily writing and creative habit. However, in terms of expanding my digital platform as a writer, the return on investment hasn’t been very good.
The reason for this is fairly clear: my blog is unfocused. Specifically, I don’t have a particular niche in which I write about. Instead, my topics range from discussions about creativity to artificial intelligence, healthcare, Twitter, and philosophy. A nice way to say it is that I have a wide intellectual lens. A more accurate way of saying it is that I am all over the place.
With this is in mind, it’s likely this summer I am going to simultaneously expand my writer’s digital platform but narrow its focus. Now, since my principal creative effort is centered around writing books, I need to make sure that whatever I do doesn’t become a time burden for me.
The first step for me to take is fairly clear. For my primary website, I’m going to shift down to one blog post a week. These blog posts will be longer-form and more carefully targeted to writing in general. They will be more SEO-friendly and designed specifically for shareability. These blog posts will be meant to drive traffic.
The second step is adding another element to my digital platform—something I have yet to decide on. Here are some of my options I’m considering.
Twitter Spaces. With over 10,000 followers I already have a reasonable Twitter presence, and—having tweeted over 16,000 times—I have a fairly good sense of the culture of Twitter and how to use it to drive traffic. A weekly audio meet-up on Twitter around a targeted subject ( such as one devoted to physician writers) would be fairly straightforward to start. The downside? I would be putting a lot of eggs in the Twitter basket, and it’s always important to remember that creators do not own Twitter content, and even a small rule change can result in losing work done on Twitter.
Podcasting. Podcasting has one very attractive element: I own my content and I can decide how I want to distribute it. There is a small technical ramp-up and there is a time commitment with editing, posting, and marketing podcasts. And, at least initially, I suspect it would take more time than writing the six blog posts it’s meant to replace. But that’s not what’s holding me back. What’s holding me back is deciding on a specific topic I will feel comfortable discussing on a podcast once a week for the next year. Until I have that subject I believe podcasting would be a mistake.
YouTube channel and Live Streaming. Video is a big deal, and for reaching out to large numbers of people it’s probably the single most effective way to generate large audiences quickly. That’s the upside. But the downside is also significant. This requires even more technical work if editing is needed. Or, if I decide to live stream without editing, then I have to accept being in front of the camera. Also, YouTube is more robust in terms of negative feedback. My thought right now is that I will put together some of the architecture for a YouTube channel starting with some fairly nonspecific content (however, I’m playing around with the idea of doing a 50-100 video content release centered around a book release).
LinkedIn. I already have a small presence on LinkedIn, mostly centered around my professional career as a physician. Expanding my position on LinkedIn as a writer may be possible but it will require me to pivot from my existing profile. One possibility would be to focus my LinkedIn content around the subject of career transitions for physicians (and other professionals?) who want to dive into more creative endeavors. Of note, video content on LinkedIn is highly valued by their algorithm and there could be an excellent crossover with such things as a YouTube Channel or podcast.
Anyway, these are just some of my ideas centering around digital platform expansion for me as a writer. I have two or three months to make my decision and as I get closer I will certainly blog more about the process.