How to Write Thoughtful Content That Lasts

From the archive. First published February 2021.

In 2017 I was helping one of the top training companies in Gurgaon with its social media and blog.

In four months, the writing team (another writer and I) increased its organic reach by 600% and gained 10,000 new subscribers.

We didn’t spend on ads. We didn’t use a PR agency to get the word around. There was no budget for boosting our Facebook posts.

So, how did we do it? By creating thoughtful relatable content.

Say you ask me a question. ‘What does it mean to be an online writer?’

You don’t want a meaningless answer. A simple Google search can give you that.

What you want to know is what goes behind the curtain when the writer is not publishing.

(The answer is writing, mostly. Working things out. Taking one piece of feedback at a time and fixing words so that every sentence you read sounds flawless.)

You make your reader curious. You pull them into the world behind the curtain and show them someone else’s life.

You tell them how, in the beginning, there are no rewards except helping an invisible audience, and you reveal the countless pitfalls.

You tell them how terribly boring it can get, having to work on four pieces a day.

When you ask a question, you want the entire movie. A plotline won’t do.

That’s the trick behind crafting thoughtful content. Give them the entire movie.

Here are three more tips on writing and publishing:

1. Be vulnerable and relatable

This could be the most powerful writing advice there is.

Everyone in the audience should stop saying the same thing as everyone else. You need to tell stories: a moment in time when you learned something of value, which, if shared, could be useful to others too.

Vulnerability is what connects you with people. The unique way you suffer in your life is far more interesting than looking good. You don’t need to cover your weaknesses.

Be relatable, and while you’re at it, tell a story that matters.

2. Publish on Quora and Medium

Last summer I ghostwrote Quora answers for the founder of an astrology brand. My strategy was simple: share the founder’s personal entrepreneurship story, listing all the lessons learned on the way, so that other people could learn from his mistakes and accomplishments.

I wrote about 25 answers for them, one of which went viral. Then we used Quora Business to promote the answer that was connecting with the audience.

To this day, that answer generates leads for the brand. It has more than 60,000 upvotes and millions of views.

The same story goes for Medium.

Quora and Medium work for small and medium-sized businesses because every answer and article on both platforms gets ranked on Google for long-tail keywords.

When people search for their answers on Google, guess whose answer might show up at the top. Yours.

Through Quora and Medium, you create your own library of content, and you also connect yourself to a much larger community on the internet.

3. Repurpose your content

My standard practice is to create at least four pieces of content out of every original piece.

For example, this piece can be used to answer a question on Quora, or structured into an article for LinkedIn or Medium. I can make quick Instagram posts out of the highlights. I can summarise it as a social media post, make an infographic, or record it as audio.

The possibilities are unlimited.

This doesn’t mean that you copy and paste the same text on different sites.

I’ll say it again: don’t copy and paste the same text on different sites.

The idea is to repurpose your content according to the format and the platform you’re publishing on.

Recap

Creating thoughtful, relatable content is the key. Show your audience what it feels like to be you.

Three tips on writing and publishing:

• Be vulnerable.

• Publish on Quora and Medium.

• Repurpose your content.

If this helped, subscribe to Yogic Productivity on Substack, where the Sunday post arrives by email. If you would like somewhere to think out loud, an Explorative Letter is a pen friend who writes back. And if you run a yoga or wellness brand and want content that sounds like you, let's talk.