Quick guide to Americans writing for a European public (or who want to make business with Europe, especially Germany).
Writing something like this:
>“I’ve interviewed more than 70 of the world’s most interesting people on my North Star Podcast, built a weekly email newsletter with almost 10,000 subscribers, and my most popular articles, such as What the Hell is Going On?, have been read more than 100,000 times. I’ve done all this in just a couple of years.“
will attract contempt and make you look like a moron. Boasting your achievements in such a straightforward way might be ok for a US public, but in Europe everyone just thinks “so what” and then “what the hell is this person trying to sell me”?
European here, you nailed it. I stopped reading because of this, unfortunately. Americans, why does everything have to sound like a cheap TV commercial from the 90s ?
I hadn't even started reading at that point. By the third sentence I was skimming. I slowed down at the heading "Age of Leverage" but didn't start actually reading till the bullet points
1. A Start Here page
2. A curated list of your favorite articles
At that point I thought the advice on bootstrapping a blog was quite worthwhile. I think the reading strategy of rejecting articles that start slow is not as good as skimming over what isn't interesting to get to what is.
I'm an American and I completely agree, but I think some context might be useful. Americans are trained from a young age that you have to sell yourself. You need to toot your own horn because no one else will. It is a component of the hustler culture in America. You always need to be fighting for the smallest advantage and overselling is a popular mechanism. Its incredibly dehumanizing, but thats never stopped America before.
Thank you. As a European who has spent a lot of time in America (and is married to an American, even), I appreciate you recognising and articulating this.
I don't know if it's exclusive to us - I hope not - but I am German and that's pretty much what I thought.
I'm aware that people have to make a living. I'm much more open for advertising at the end of an enjoyable piece, if I have developed an appetite for more.
It's exclusive to non-American, ie, doing this "always marketing yourself" thing whenever you talk or write or communicate in any way is kinda exclusive to Americans (as being acceptable and normal). The "sell yourself" culture is pretty deeply ingrained in this country in almost all personal communication, except with very close and trusted friends, and even then you'll often find inclinations to sell themselves socially.
I think your armchair anthropology ignores the diversity of speakers and cultures in the United States. Could you share more about your methodology?
Also, the OP _is_ selling something. If you opened your eyelids slightly, you could see his mentioning of an online ‘course.’ This article is itself “content marketing” so the OP is likely fishing for customers from this HN post.
Checking OP's posting history, it appears to be all his own articles/blog posts/whatever. Yep, shameless self-promoting spammer. That's enough to guarantee I will not be reading (let alone purchasing) anything from him.
Hi, Belgian here. Normally I also don't like people boasting. But in such articles, I like to have a background about the person.
I'm not going to waste my time reading advice from someone who posted 5 articles and has 10 subscribers.". And if they don't tell me why I have to listen to them, I won't.
> And if they don't tell me why I have to listen to them, I won't.
They might just be lying. "But they wrote in their intro that they are an expert" isn't a good way to determine whether they are an expert on the topic imho.
Job applicants might be expected to list relevant achievements, but there are ways to do that which convey the message "I can substantiate that I get shit done, and think I could do more in your organization" rather than "I think my blog is amazing, and now I'm going to show you how you could hit those heights".
To be fair to the author, he's writing a content piece for clicks through to a $699+ course rather than a cover letter for a job so he probably wants the hyperbolic "I've done all this in just two years. And now I'm going to teach you" tone rather than the "Over two years I've built...which is relevant because...". People that are put off by hyperbole generally aren't going to buy his course anyway.
It depends on the sector or the industry but so far all cover letters I saw were more about the applicant's qualities and personality than work achievements.
This is the online trend of marketing eating itself, where they sell the I'M ACCOMPLISHED, IT'S EASY is followed by YOU CAN DO IT TO followed by a couple minor points of interest so it feels substantial, then a long-winded rehash how important everything is and how capable you are of doing it, and oh look there happens to be an intensive course for learning all of this but if you REALLY want to be a superstar marketer there is an ultra-special course...
It's kind of like a pyramid scheme of skills/accomplishments where every person in the system is spending all their energy teaching everyone else how to sell their skills and accomplishments as the first step without anyone actually saying or doing anything of value. I would say Tony Robbins is the kingpin of this, where he has built a career out of successfully telling people how they can be just like Tony Robbins with just a sprinkle of substance to make it feel like a meal.
10k subscribers to a mailing list. Oh wow! So impressive.
I managed niche newsletters with up to 35.000 subscribers in the past, built by the company I was freelancing for. In Italian. I didn’t have the reach of English. I consider it a very average work and achievement, frankly. If I’d ever put that in a CV here in Germany, companies would LAUGH at me and even be upset about such formulation.
100.000 views. Again, So what? A column I wrote last month had 120.000 views and 800 comments. I also think it’s good but not impressive.
So now, the problem is either I can’t really market myself, (or I don’t care) or it’s just a very profound cultural difference here between America and the rest of the World.
>> I managed niche newsletters with up to 35.000 subscribers in the past, built by the company I was freelancing for.
>> 100.000 views. Again, So what? A column I wrote last month had 120.000 views and 800 comments
Here is the difference: You can inherit a million dollars from your dad and buy a Lamborghini. But it is more impressive if you start from nothing and buy your own Kia.
Similarly, when you say a "column you wrote" without mentioning the crucial bit: on whose platform? - without any context, it is actually very hard to say if it was a big deal. Also, can you do it consistently? (I suppose the author thinks he can). Can you follow a process and help others do the same (which presumably is what the author has tried to do)? It is the difference between winning the lottery and making a million dollars, versus building a business system and making an impressive 6 figure profit. Clearly, there is nothing to learn from the former. And usually there is something to learn from the latter.
Whether or not you think his credentials are impressive is one thing. But the data you are using to back up the criticism isn't making a lot of sense TBH.
I confess to having my confidence in the writer shaken when I read, "That’s when they’ll pour through the archives".
No, they won't. They might pore through your archives, though.
Offering a course in "Online Writing" and then making such a basic usage error did not inspire much confidence. Perhaps another pair of editorial eyes might help? For any writer (myself especially included!) editors and proofreaders are your friends. I've also misused words and had someone else point out my error, and I'm grateful to them for having taught me something.
Lesson: If you aspire to "being a writer" - online or anywhere - get editorial help where polish matters.
One of the things I've been struggling with is that once I've mastered a topic enough to feel comfortable writing about it, everything I write sounds obvious to me, and from there there is an easy leap to "it's probably obvious to everyone", and I start questioning whether I should write at all. Anyone has dealt with this? Tips would be appreciated.
I feel this too, and the way I deal with it is writing targeting the audience that you can still remember being a part of, for whatever is interesting to you.
So think back to what you knew and thought 6-9 months ago, and write for people in that boat. You probably learned a nifty trick or two since then, or had a recent revelation. Write just about that. Once you have an audience you can start to listen to their reactions and further questions to decide how to back-propagate from there even more (because not everyone arrives at that point from the same path).
The cool thing is that this works even for stuff you aren't a master at -- there's always someone who is just a step or two behind you in whatever it is you are doing, even if you are only on step 4 or 5 from being an absolute beginner. As long as you care about the topic and can pinpoint a meaningful thesis for your writing.
It's a rather limited form of writing, but if you have some topic that is also covered by Stack Overflow, you can answer questions.
That has the (big, in this context) benefit of directly and immediately showing that a) there is interest in the answer, since someone posted the question; and b) feedback about the quality of your answer, with the option to edit and improve it.
Sure it's bite-sized for the most part, but it is writing in some form. And yes I'm biased, it's easily my number one form of writing (but I don't go around wanting to be a writer, I don't think).
I know the feeling. What has somewhat helped me is to not write for publishing to the general population but for somebody who doesn't know about the topic. A gentle introduction that they consider not too demanding to follow but feels like they have a better understanding after reading. You can publish later, but I find it easier to focus on a single person and make it useful for them.
Any time I learn anything new it's never "wow, now I am smart", but always "ohh... I can't believe everyone but me has known this thing all this time".
What's the problem with writing something obvious? Honest question. I don't see why that should matter. (I mean, sure, you don't want to write 1000 words about how you should blink your eyes so they don't dry out.) Try to think of one person you know that wouldn't already know what you're writing. Even if it's obvious, it's not literally something everyone in the world already knows or shares your perspective on.
> What's the problem with writing something obvious?
You're not contributing something useful if you're just pointing out the obvious. Yeah, you can write the ten millionth article on how to change the default slogan in WordPress, but unless that's the maximum extent of your knowledge, you're wasting your potential and everybody else's time. That's how I feel about it at least, and why I don't write stuff that's too obvious or has already been widely covered. In that case, I might give a small overview and some tips to newcomers and link to others that I think did a good job.
There isn't a lot of a difference to me: the obvious has been stated by nearly everyone. You're right that there will always be some that can benefit from what one might consider obvious, but the amount of people depends on the level of what you're writing about. There are people that don't know how to change the default slogan on a WP site after all.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that nobody should write about that, I'm offering my perspective on why I probably wouldn't.
The key is to accept that whatever is your topic and however you write it, someone will be disappointed because it is too simple, someone will be disappointed because it is too complex, someone will not understand the article because they miss some of the prerequisites, and someone will get angry because you spend too much time explaining the prerequisites.
People are different, you can't make everyone happy. The unhappy people are more likely to give feedback than the happy ones. (You probably wonder why other writers have tons of positive feedback. They likely paid for it. Or it is link spam: "your article is so awesome and inspiring; now here is a link to my completely unrelated web page".)
I guess you just have to imagine the target audience, and keep writing for them. First you get both positive and negative comments, which is okay, because the people who didn't like the first part should stop reading. If they keep reading your N-th article and posting the same angry comments, they are idiots; ban them and erase their comments. (There is a difference between pointing out a mistake, which is a good thing, and posting "this is noob stuff, loser" under ten articles in a row, which is bullying.)
From the headline, I thought it was going to talk about the well-hashed-over advice of keeping online content short, concise, and skimmable. But when he spent 4 paragraphs just leading up to a statement of, "In this essay, I'll show you...", and then a table of contents. I pretty much gave up, as even if the rest of the article does have something to say about writing, it clearly isn't going to be accurate to the 'Online' part of the headline.
> "As Devon Zuegel said in my interview with her, writing falls into three buckets: (1) trivial things that everybody knows, (2) things that everybody knows, [but nobody around you knows], and you have a unique perspective on, and (3) stuff that nobody knows so you have to do tons of research. Direct your energy towards the second bucket.”
Amusingly, this leaves out things that nobody knows but desperately wants to know, among other potential things.
Writing something like this:
>“I’ve interviewed more than 70 of the world’s most interesting people on my North Star Podcast, built a weekly email newsletter with almost 10,000 subscribers, and my most popular articles, such as What the Hell is Going On?, have been read more than 100,000 times. I’ve done all this in just a couple of years.“
will attract contempt and make you look like a moron. Boasting your achievements in such a straightforward way might be ok for a US public, but in Europe everyone just thinks “so what” and then “what the hell is this person trying to sell me”?