Marketing lesson #2: be authentic

There’s a story of Isaac Asimov having great admiration for Carl Sagan and his books. This is what Asimov had to say of Sagan: “You are my idea of a good writer because you have an unmannered style, and when I read what you write, I hear you talking.”

And Asimov was the one who in his lifetime wrote and published hundreds of books and short stories!

I believe that people don’t follow blogs; they follow people. What do I mean by that? I think it’s not so much the content, but the unique voice that people are drawn to. Of course, content is important, but what’s more important than the “what” is the “how.” I.e., every story has probably already been told, but has it been told by you?

There’s a quite entertaining channel on Youtube called “Camera Conspiracies”. I haven’t been lately able to keep up with his videos, but when I did, I noticed that many people follow him even though they weren’t into film-making, vloging or the video aspect of cameras in general (which is what he mostly talks about).

They follow him because he’s unique. He doesn’t have filters. He’s just him. Whether people like him or not is probably none of his concern. He puts himself out there, saying “this is me, like it or not.” Same goes for all of the successful content creators.

Authenticity is what we all crave. In today’s world, there is so little authenticity, everyone trying to be someone they’re not, putting up a mask, filtering their words, and trying not to offend others.

If you hold yourself back, trying to be liked by everyone, you end up being boring. Either be hated or loved but not boring. Boring equals death. Boring is “meh.”