Have you ever noticed how nine out of ten marketing strategists, when asked how someone can best approach their audience, say that they should produce what the audience wants to consume?
If you're here on Steemit and are not one of the early adopters , you're probably trying hard to produce your own, original content without having any idea how to do it. You're probably fighting against the urge of getting stressed, right? Because, man, just hours and hours of trying to polish it in order to make it merely, if not barely, consumable. And I bet you're doing all of that for some cents in the upvotes section; maybe it's a lucky day and you get a dollar.
It's very tempting to go all the way and just accept that you have to produce what people are already demanding.
But that's a wrong notion.
Marketing seems to get that notion from Postmodernism - if you're not familiar with Postmodernism, it's just a fancy word for how Nihilistic and individualist our society is. They hear some Philosophers saying that "nowadays, people don't get structures, what's important is the self, the immediate desire; you don't get to tell people what they should consume, but they get to tell you what you should produce" and, for some, reason they think that the coin has flipped. Huge misinterpretation.
Although the assessment is valid to some extent, anyone who says that people dictate the market and use Postmodernism as a rationale forgets one crucial aspect of people: they are craving for individual expression. Simply put, everyone wants to get to know other people are in the inside because, by doing so, they feel less empty. Less lonely. This is what really dictates the market: people wanting to hear voices that are not their own.
Today's mantra is: forget your damn audience. Once and for all.
Remember that in your next post, because, if you offer something that comes from the deepest parts of yourself, something that you love, that you feel the world should know, then, my friend, I can guarantee you that this something will be far more successful than any marketish stuff you could have come up with.
Individual expression is the key.
See you in tomorrow's mantra.