I was sitting chatting with an old friend the other day about a new project he’s starting. He was asking for some of my advice and expertise and, weirdly, as I started to explain things to him, I realised that, on paper at least, I appear to be doing it all wrong. I found myself saying “this is what I do, but you might not want to copy it” quite often during our chat. Content creation is one of those things I’ve learned to approach differently.
But by the third cup of coffee, as I was explaining how to actually understand analytics data and use that information to guide business decisions, he said: “You should share this because it’s fascinating how you approach this.”
Maybe.
But I don’t want to sit here for the next 10 minutes throwing acronyms at you. And I wouldn’t usually use my own stuff as the examples because it can come across as me marketing at you and I’m not. I think that if I can show you some of the problems that I think we share when it comes to content, then maybe it’ll serve as either a warning or a eureka moment for you.
The Content isn’t the Problem with Content Creation
In just about every creative job I’ve done, creating tons of output was part of the job. A newspaper production department on deadline day is as busy and chaotic as any professional kitchen. Creating jingles and adverts for local radio requires a ridiculous amount of work to maintain the amount of output required. And I loved all of it.
The chaos, the carnage, I lived for it.
But when it comes to my art? I’m a lot more protective of it.
I’ve spent my life making art and developing a voice — which is really only a series of decisions based on personal preference — and I’m not prepared to suddenly have to package and commodify my work in order to satisfy some arbitrary rules imposed on me by tech.
But I still want you to see my work. Just like you want me to see yours. So we have to play the game, right? And that’s the dilemma that I think we all face every day.
The problem isn’t making lots of stuff.
The problem is what happens when content creation becomes the job. Having your creative identity turned into an output-generating machine for somebody else’s metric. Tattooing already has a rich culture that’s worth protecting and this pressure to make ‘engaging reels’ is just another way in which our shared culture is being diluted by people whose job it is, to turn attention into money.
That’s the bit that bothers me.
Because, to be honest, content creation feels like it has become a prison for most tattooists, including me. Very few of us enjoy it, most of us hate it and almost no-one understands what the algorithm actually is. And yet the sage advice is everywhere.
Post more.
Tell your story.
Get a hook.
10x your views.
Comment “hamster” and I’ll DM you a link to my 20 quid ebook.
But simply saying “fuck the algorithm”, although it feels great to say because it’s like sticking it to the man, is sadly too simple and potentially career damaging. And that’s where I think we all have to start making decisions.
Because if, instead, you allow yourself to be forced to respond to external rewards, eventually those decisions become your creative voice. And suddenly you’ve optimised yourself into somebody else’s idea of what tattooing should be.
Not shit.
Not terrible.
But not different.
Just… medium.
Very good might be the enemy of great. But medium is the enemy of anything remotely interesting. So I decided, instead of saying ‘fuck the algorithm’ to try and make it work for me.
My way.
I spent time understanding what the accepted wisdom is. What the playing field looks like. And then I’ve made decisions about my content, this channel, my website, newsletter, Instagram, everything, based primarily on a simple rule: Am I cool with this? And then I asked myself one question:
How can this, visually, fit into a content strategy that I can live with? One that feels like me.
If you’re in the middle of the road, you’re taking up too much room.
I’m not doing this because I have some romantic belief in authenticity, though. I just want to make stuff that I actually give a shit about and present it in a way that I think looks cool. Even if it’s only for a few people that care.
That’s not to say the content creators churning out endless bullshit reels don’t care. They do. But they care about a different version of good than I do. How you look at things changes what you see. They’re all chasing a 25-year-old mantra that was “drive the click, drive the click”. My disdain for the medium means I won’t blindly optimise myself into irrelevance because I’m not “cool with it”.
Take this channel, for example.
My thumbnails don’t really follow the rules.
They’re quite quiet.
There’s almost no text.
They don’t scream at you.
They don’t necessarily tell you exactly what you’re going to get either. And if the objective was simply to maximise clicks, that might be a stupid strategy.
But I think most YouTube thumbnails look shit.
I’m a graphic designer at heart and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to make bad work just to blow up like Mr Beast.
It’s not that I can’t. I just won’t.
I’m interested in the person who sees my thumbnail and thinks that looks calm and the title is interesting. If they give an episode a watch, they won’t feel tricked by clickbait.
And then there’s the actual content. For me, that’s where content creation gets interesting.
I want to talk about why things are changing. Why artists behave the way they do. Why some artists become more valuable than others. What technology does to a creative profession. What happens when everybody gets access to the same information.
I’m not trying to go viral. I’m trying to become relevant to a small group of people who get it and come back to hang out with someone who sees the world in a way that makes them think. This is pretty close to how I’ve always presented my tattoos.
I’m not chasing the same thing as everyone else, never have been and I hope by showing you this at work you’ll see that maybe you don’t need to in your tattoo career either. Now, let’s have a look at a chart…
Episode 8 has the highest view count on the channel. 3,528 people watched it. It’s the most successful video so far, right? So accepted wisdom would say, double down and make ten more of them, right?
Well, no.
The average person watched for just 3 minutes and 58 seconds. Episode 9, on the other hand, got less than a third of those views, but the average viewer stayed for far longer.
So which one is more successful? Well, it depends.
If I only wanted to impress the hell out of sponsors I could just show them the big number. But the big number isn’t the whole story. If I get 100,000 people to watch something for four minutes because I’ve figured out how to make them click, but none of them stick around to the end, what’s the point of the views?
I’m trying to make content and a channel that will attract tattooists who want something with actual depth.
Now, if you’re feeling like “fuck it, Paul’s got a point that’s what I’m going to do” I’m going to give you the same warning that I gave to my friend.
I don’t know if it’s going to work.
If everybody is doing something and you can see that it works, you can optimise it. You can copy the structure. You can make your version. And that’s why medium is everywhere these days. But if you want to do something that doesn’t already exist, you can’t optimise your way into something nobody has seen before.
That’s the really uncomfortable thing about doing things differently.
Sometimes you have to do the thing that feels right before you know whether it works. At some point you have to be willing to take the risk that the thing you think is interesting — the thing YOU care about — might actually be interesting.
If you always wait until the data tells you it’s a good idea, you’re only ever going to do things that somebody else has already proved. And then you look around and realise that everybody else has become very good at producing exactly the same thing too.
That’s the bit I’m trying to avoid. I don’t want Notes on Tattooing to become another version of the same tattoo podcast that’s already everywhere these days. And I certainly don’t want to spend the next ten years performing my own creativity because some platform has decided that this is what a successful creative career looks like.
I’m learning the rules.
I’m looking at the data.
I’m understanding how the game works.
And then I’m deciding which bits I’m prepared to play.
And which bits I’m not.
Because maybe that’s what having a creative career actually means now.
Not refusing to play the game.
Just deciding how you’re going to play.
I want the right people to find me.
I want them to know what I’m about.
And I want what I make to remain recognisably mine.