I’m Conducting a 90-Day Content Writing Experiment—Welcome to the “Content Storm”

In this blog post, I’m going to explain what my “Content Storm” is, why I’m doing it, and how you can follow along. If you’re curious, feel free to come back in March when I rustle up a case study from it all. If you’re really curious and want to come along, follow @WriterHeatherL on Twitter and #ContentStorm.

While reflecting on my content goals for 2022, I realized one thing. I simply haven’t been consistent about posting content.

While doing NaNoWriMo last month (I won) I realized something. I have no problem with being consistent! The past two years have been a rollercoaster, which is why writing and posting consistently have been a challenge. I may write most days but that doesn’t mean I also post the writing each day. That’s another problem. So I’m challenging myself to POST daily.

It does me no good if I never post the stuff I write!

My web traffic is better when I post more often on my sites. But how do I graduate from “often” to “consistent?” Will consistency actually help what I am trying to accomplish? Or do I need to completely change something else, like my branding or marketing plan?

Here’s where I’ll be posting content over the next 90 days. My goal is to grow an audience. My KPIs aren’t to grow a certain amount of followers or page views. My goal is to find out if posting content consistently will grow an audience—and which content platforms are most responsive to consistent content posting.

My only rule is to publish my writing daily to one of these places:

What’s Definitely Not Working?

No More Facebook

I’ve realized for the first time I am no longer receiving ANY traffic to DestinyArchitecture.com from Facebook. None. But guess who has still been posting her stuff to Facebook? Bingo. But this raised the question, “Where else am I wasting my time?”

Also on the Chopping Block: Patreon

I’ve given Patreon a good run. In its first iteration, I offered too much stuff for Patrons. There was coaching, Reiki, and a mastermind. I niched it down this year to be about ONLY Reiki. I’ve had a whopping total of two Patrons at most. I’m down to one now. I prepared a great offer and decided to post like crazy to generate interest from those who practice Reiki while I look into the Patreon algorithm. I honestly have no idea how to beat it. The platform’s vague analytics only show I receive most of my traffic through Patreon.

My theory on Reiki is that the market is too saturated with content about it. I also think I didn’t previously have a good enough offer. If Patreon doesn’t make it in three more months of consistent content, it goes. This is fine because my entire goal was to write a Reiki ebook from it and I think I can do that with three more months’ consistent Patreon content. If people sign up, then mission accomplished. I’d prefer the Patreon survive so I can create a Reiki community online. That’s been the goal, along with creating an ebook.

I’m sharing this because I hope to learn from my efforts and mistakes over time. I believe in “building in public.” So let’s talk about a couple of other content verticals I’m trying.

What’s New?

Medium

I decided to make Medium a part of my 90-day Content Storm. I’d been wanting to get into it for a while and have posted a whopping two stories there this year. I studied up on it and it seems to me it’s a place where you can do well as long as you’re adding value. I think that’s true of all online spaces now. I think I’ll post a range of content to see what people find more appealing. The two pop culture pieces I originally posted bombed. People don’t want that. They want how-to articles, lists, information, or anything they can utilize on their journey.

Substack

I’m curious about Substack, so I’m just going to do it. I’ve followed Judd Legum’s “Popular Information” for a long time now… But I get his free emails. I also signed up for the Free Press Report, which follows the Maxwell trial. I decided to start something on Substack combining two things I know my audience likes—habits and yoga. I’m calling it—drumroll please—Great Habits + Yoga. It’s free to read and I’m looking at it as a way to create thought leadership around yoga as I complete my RYT-200. It’s also a way to show off my expertise as a Certified Transformational Life Coach.

I know there are “influencers” right now talking about Substack. (They’re paid to do so; I am not). I, therefore, assume Substack has some SOS going on—or “Shiny Object Syndrome.”

Here’s my first issue of Great Habits + Yoga

Revue Newsletters

I started a Revue newsletter for @WriterHeatherL Twitter, which is what made me realize how easy it is to use. It pulls up your tweets from the previous week so you can drag and drop them into the newsletter. I can create a full newsletter in minutes. (Feel free to be my 2nd-ever subscriber).

It’s so easy that I converted my Destiny Architecture newsletter to Revue from ConvertKit. I realized I wasn’t going to do the damn newsletter unless it was easier / faster! Revue makes it so easy! I’m not kidding, it’s so simple and quick that I’m not even going to count it as part of the 90-day Content Storm.

Revue Newsletters:

Destiny Architecture: Life Coaching, Reiki, and Yoga Newsletter

Writer Heather Weekly Writing Jolt Newsletter

The Podcast

The Fearless 5 Podcast has been on a hiatus for much of the year as I recovered from COVID-19. But it’s still somehow picking up steam and finding an audience. I was about to bail on Anchor and started shopping around for other platforms. But for now, I’m planning to stay and create video podcasts for Spotify since they added that capability.

Follow on Anchor (or Apple, Spotify, etc)

Metrics & Accountability

Finally, for the sake of making a case study out of all this in March, I’ve preserved how all these verticals looked when I started this challenge. I took screenshots of everything on November 30, 2021. I will revisit it once it’s over in March. I’m keeping a spreadsheet where I’m logging what I publish daily.

Every day, I tweet from @WriterHeatherL what I wrote. You can also follow the hashtag “#ContentStorm” on Twitter to view these tweets (or mute them if you’re not interested).

Tweets by WriterHeatherL

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