Top Three Mistakes I've Made As a Creator

Welcome to the 6th edition of The 1% Newsletter.

Last month we crossed 1000 subscribers, and today we've reached 1438 readers.

To the 638 new subscribers and all prior readers of the newsletter, it's a pleasure to have each one of you on board The 1% Club.

Today's going to be a fun one.

This is the start of a three-part series that's going to cover:

1. Three mistakes I've made as a creator

2. How to repurpose content effectively

3. The science behind viral thread hooks

Bonus: there's a gift waiting for you at the end of each newsletter.

Let's get started.

Three Mistakes I've Made As A Creator

It's no secret that I'm a massive advocate of the creator economy.

To simplify it for you, the creator economy is a model that allows users of social media to create content, build an audience and get paid for their products or services.

Let me tell you this, being a creator is a lot of fun.

As you create content, you attract people who share the same ideas that you do.

And it doesn't get any better than that.

But there's something you need to understand.

This took me far too long to realize.

In order to be among the top 1% of creators, you need to do more than just create content and publish it. It's crucial to find a style that will set you apart from the crowd. And you have to understand the basic principles of branding, psychology, copywriting, sales, marketing and, of course, content creation.

Failure to understand this was the first of many mistakes I've made over the past 12 months.

And if I could go back in time, I would do a lot of things differently.

You're about to find out the top three mistakes I've made from my experience as a creator and a few solutions to help you overcome them.

Mistake #1: Not connecting with the audience.

Social media is a numbers game.

If you're like most creators, you've centred your focus on your reach, followers, and subscribers.

Let me be the first to admit that I was blinded by those numbers and prioritized them as the metric to gauge my performance as a creator. But that made me lose sight of what really matters.

Every follower is more than just a number.

They enjoy your content, resonate with your words and also have a story to be told.

So if you're not reaching out to members of your audience that you're creating content for in the first place, you've missed the point.

Solution: Reach out and DM one in every ten new followers.

This is easy to implement, especially if you're just starting out.

But it only gets harder as your audience grows with time.

Introduce yourself to your followers, ask a few questions and just be human.

Don't be that person who instantly sends a message to pitch your services.

Your goal is not just to build your follower count.

Your goal is to build authentic friendships and true fans.

Mistake #2: Being too structured.

I'm a perfectionist.

And it took me a while to find the intersection between my skill set and my writing style.

But once I did, I stuck to the formula by the book and never considered trying anything else.

Big mistake.

Solution: Don't be afraid to experiment and have fun.

Being a creator is about breaking the rules. Trying out different things. Enjoying the process.

There's nothing worse than someone regurgitating the same information as everyone else.

So take your audience behind the scenes.

Share a few pictures and videos.

And don't be afraid to write about topics you've never written about before.

Make it a habit to create content that scares you on a regular basis.

Mistake #3: Not scheduling content.

My content strategy was pretty simple at the start.

Write one tweet a day that I could think of on the spot and hit publish.

From a consumer's perspective, this worked.

But from a creator's perspective, this created unnecessary pressure and stress.

My daily dispatch had no system behind it - it was just a mix of platitudes and value tweets that were created from scratch in minutes.

Worst of all, I was writing for myself rather than my readers.

And once again, that was a big mistake.

Solution: Schedule your tweets at least one day in advance.

Keep in mind that your best content won't just appear out of thin air.

Because there are three different stages behind the creation process:

1. Ideation - Collecting ideas

2. Creation - Compiling the ideas

3. Editing - Refining the ideas

If you dedicate time to each of these steps, you'll notice that your content will be much more insightful, unique and attractive to your target audience.

Make it a habit to write at least five tweets a day, and have at least one of them ready to publish a day in advance. If you can invest in a content scheduler, even better.

Trust me, this is going to save you several hours every single week.

To get a deeper insight into how to create high-signal content in 30 minutes a day, check out my thread from this past week below:

Alright, as promised, here's your first gift of this series:

The Twitter Resource Hub.

This contains some of the best threads on content creation, online business, personal branding and audience building.

Before we wrap up I'd like to leave you with a quote by Epictetus to carry into your week:

"How much longer are you going to wait until you demand the best from yourself."

There's probably something that's been on your mind for weeks.

Maybe even years.

However, it remains a thought, waiting for action.

There are 67 days left until the end of the new year, and there's no better time for you to take action and get started with that specific thought at this very moment.

To guide you with your process, here's a thread I published a few weeks ago that shares the exact system you need to set yourself up for success for the rest of this year.

Once again thank you to all 1438 members of The 1% Newsletter for reading this edition.

If you'd like to share your feedback and reach out to me, you can reply to this email and I'll get back to you soon as possible.

I hope you have a fantastic day ahead.

Stay tuned for part two of this series; How to repurpose content effectively.

Dr Pranav

@The1stReporter