If you’re a good writer, but want to improve your skill at the “business of writing,” you may like this post.
I’ve been reading a bio about Walt Disney, studying his magical ways.
This creative little homie, Walt, tore out an orange grove in Anaheim quite a few years ago, so that today, your family and mine can enjoy the Haunted Mansion and some tasty-a$$ churros.
But let’s put Disney’s magical theme parks aside for a moment, and take a look at how Disney created (and posthumously continues to grow) the world’s most prolific library of entertainment media.
And all of this from a guy who was an animator of moderate talent, who was apparently not that great at business either.
The Problem: Creating Content Your Audience Loves (Consistently)
In the early days of his career, Walt was trying to establish an animation studio–something that barely existed at the time.
He began catching attention creating animations that combined a live-action character (“Alice”) who appeared to be interacting with the animated scenes.
Disney’s Alice shorts were some one of the first movies of its kind, and a method he continued using much later in his career (e.g. Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, etc.).
Desperate to get his Alice animations in front of as many people as possible, Walt made an impulsive deal with a small distributor from NYC.
Now Walt was under intense pressure to create a prolific amount of animations, in a short period of time, on a shoestring budget.
Reasons Why It’s Hard to Create Consistent Content Your Audience Loves
When Walt Disney first set out to establish his tiny studio in Kansas City, one of his greatest hurdles was money.
That’s because his creative work of making animations–a new technology at the time, required ink, paint, special paper, cameras, film, a growing team of employees, and a physical building to house his operations.
Luckily for digital writers, the “art” of writing requires a minimal amount of materials.
(See–you’re already one step ahead of Walt.)
But just as Walt had his challenges, there are plenty of obstacles that make writing online difficult:
- You don’t know what type of content your audience loves
- Writer’s block
- An unclear business plan
- Half-assed commitment
- Spread too thin with too many irons in the fire
All of these reasons, and you may still have your own “personal El Guapo1” to confront–could be fear, boredom, self-loathing–at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter.
Because it only takes one excuse–just one (pick your favorite)–to fumble those able fingers of yours away from the keyboard.
What Happens When You Don’t Create Consistent, Weekly Content
Winter is Coming, And You Won’t Be Ready
Business life is seasonal.
“Winter” comes in various forms:
- A slow economy
- Employee churn
- Political or legal change
- Family emergencies that temporarily require more personal time away from work
- Work emergencies that temporarily demand more of your attention away from family
- AI slop sh*t effin’ with your digital world
- Increasing costs of digital advertising
- Etc.
When Winter Comes, You’re Susceptible to “Famine Panic”
Famine Panic sets in when winter appears in one fashion or another, and you begin to realize how much of your business revenue actually depended on people and circumstances outside of your own efforts.
You didn’t change a single thing you were doing, but suddenly you have no leads, no clients, and a scary amount of free time on your hands.
If you’re not publishing consistently, then you aren’t contributing to your portfolio of digital assets–a lead generation powerhouse you could’ve been slowly growing all year long, like a squirrel gathering nuts–to keep you plump and happy with a copious amount of quality leads that feed you during those “winter” seasons that will eventually come.
Makes You Susceptible to the Dark Overlords of Digital Ads
When businesses haven’t established a digital library asset, and leads from external sources have for one reason or another gone dry, the temptation will be to offer a sacrifice (of cash) unto the Dark Overlords of Digital Ads.
And if you’re not some kind of digital ads sorcerer (pro tip: most aren’t), effing around in the digital ads space may become it’s own version of hell for your business.
Franz Khafka’s novel “The Trial” is all about nonsensical bad things that happen to the protagonist that cause him existential dread (think opposite of Disney stories)–this is what it’s like to be at the mercy of digital ads.
For example, just the other day I searched “traffic attorney,” with the intent of looking for a traffic ticket attorney. But Google showed me an ad for a traffic accident attorney, which I unwittingly clicked.
I looked up the bid range for that ad, and it was $5-$25.
So that attorney just paid between $5-$25, just so some online rando (me) could accidentally click on his link and bring him zero business.
Ya click around, ya find out.
(Sorry, bro).
Let’s pretend he was a personal injury attorney in Irvine, and he wanted to buy an ad for “personal injury attorney Irvine.” At the time of this writing, that ad would’ve cost him $40-$300, per click.
No thank you.
I’d rather play the long-term game of growing my email list and blog over time into powerful digital assets, which I can keep building slowly but steadily–like putting away small bits of cash into an index fund that compounds exponentially over time.
Especially in this AI-effed world we’re swimming in, the ever-increasing cost of digital ads just keeps rising more and more rapidly, as more and more non-believers keep jumping the content creation ship.
Good news is, this leaves an ever-increasing opportunity for Conpytent Writers2 to help businesses dominate the internet in their chosen niche.
The Solution: Use (1) The Writing Approach, (2) The Writing Template, and (3) The Disney Formula
I came across this wisdom a couple days ago:
“Instead of resisting what you don’t want, insist and persist on what you do want.”
I think this perfectly sums up the little ball of grit needed to just type and send an email once a week. It’s not something you want to overcomplicate (and writing is easy to overcomplicate). So especially in the beginning, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible.
If you’re the romantic type, this may go against your natural grain of thinking, but it so happens that writing weekly emails more closely resembles working an assembly line in Detroit, than it does painting a Van Gogh.
(1) The Writing Approach
- Pick a day and time to publish every week–set it in stone.
- Choose an email software provider like Mailerlite, BerserkerMail, or personally, I like Kit the best (here’s my affiliate link for Kit).
- Import your email contacts into your email software.
- Sit down to write your email one week before its due date, so you have plenty of time to meet your deadline.
- Copy/ paste The Writing Template (below) into a new email campaign inside your email software.
- Fill in the Template.
- Hit send.
How The Writing Approach Helps:
- Establishes a Writing Habit. Setting a regular date and time for publishing helps you push past the initial resistance you feel when you try something new, until you’ve established a writing habit and start doing it naturally. Also, it treats writing like the job that it is–as opposed to waiting for a sexy Latina muse to magically appear from the heavens and beckon you toward publishing glory.
- Ensures Timely Publishing. An email really shouldn’t take longer than an hour to write. The Writing Approach combined with the Writing Template (see below) could cut down your writing time to 30 minutes or less. When you are a week ahead of schedule, it creates a psychological momentum, and gives you room to breathe.
- Removes Any Extra Thinking. The step-by-step approach removes the burden of thinking through “What do I do next?” Just take action on each of the steps, in order. Done.
- Automatically Collect Emails. Email software like Kit makes it super simple to collect email addresses through a lead magnet, like I do on this landing page here. When your lead magnet provides highly valuable education specific to your niche, you’ll be strengthening the quality of your audience, which improves your conversion rates of turning subscribers into clients and referral sources.
(2) The Writing Template
Here’s the basic Writing Template that creates content your niche loves and becomes addicted to, and which you can use not just for writing emails, but for writing blog posts, LinkedIn articles, and website landing pages:
-Header
-Identify the problem confronting your niche
-State the reason(s) your niche has this problem
-Describe the negative outcome(s) resulting from this problem (micro/ macro)
-Identify the solution
-State the reason(s) this solution solves this particular problem
-Describe the positive outcomes this solution gives to your niche (micro/ macro)
-One call to action
How The Writing Template Helps:
- Helps You Write Faster. The Writing Template breaks down your draft into its various components, making it easy to cut, paste, and re-arrange your article to improve its clarity and flow. When you do all of the strategic thinking ahead of time, it makes writing the individual subsections much easier to write.
- Kills Writer’s Block. When you treat writing more like working an assembly line, as opposed to writing the next Great American Novel, suddenly you no longer need a “muse.” I know that sounds unromantic, but I’ve found the more I train myself to use the Writing Approach and Writing Template, the more clear my writing has become, and I can finish writing an email in half the time–because all of the strategic decision-making has been done ahead of time.
- Improves Clarity. The hardest part about writing is clarity of thought. Our thoughts are often abstract, so crystalizing that abstract “mush” in the mind into something concrete on the page, can be challenging. That’s where The Writing Template comes in–each main idea of your article now has a container to live in, and the organization and flow is already laid out for you.
(3) The Disney Proliferation Formula
Recently my 12-year-old daughter and I saw the live-action Moana movie.
We watched the animated movie a million times together when she was little, and now at the age of 12, I can already see her becoming that strong, brave young lady, like Moana.
So I had a tearful little dad moment, there in the dark movie theater, during that opening scene when the ocean calls Moana to her purpose…
And then I thought: Disney is f*ckin smart.
Not just because they write great stories that captivate their audience, but because they’ve nailed down an essential formula for being successful in “the business of art”:
The Disney Proliferation Formula:
- Take something you’ve already published
- Modify it slightly
- Publish it again
- Make more $$$
With Moana, Disney took the same essential story from the animated movie and re-published it with live actors.
And they could publish it again (if they haven’t already) as a storybook, Netflix series, podcast, Youtube channel, etc.
Disney does this with remakes of classics (e.g. The Lion King), character spin-off TV shows (e.g. Tinker Bell), and products (e.g. Moana sippy cup).
This post you’re reading now is also an example: first it was an email I sent to my email list, now I’ve edited it and published it on my blog.
How The Disney Proliferation Formula Helps
The Disney Formula honors the hard creative work you put into every piece of content you write, and magnifies it, which has multiple benefits.
For one, the more emails/ blog posts/ articles you publish, the faster you’ll grow your audience, because you’re attracting attention from those who don’t yet know about you, but who are fascinated with what you’re writing about–this is the fruit born from the Writing Template (above).
Second, it helps you satisfy your existing audience, by giving them more of what they love. This may sound counterintuitive at first, if you’re wondering why your audience would be interested in hearing something you’ve already told them before. But here’s why your audience will love it:
- Think of it like this: if you’re a huge fan of a particular type of creator, you want to get your hands on everything that creator makes. Pretend you listened to your favorite album by your favorite band all day on Apple music, but when searching Youtube tonight, a video pops up of the band performing it live, or with an orchestra or …(fill in the blank). Of course you’re going to want to listen to it! Same artist, same album, new medium.
- If I bought a paper book and loved the story or the writer, I might also buy it in audio format (so I can listen while exercising), and I might also buy it in Kindle format (so I can bring it with me while I travel).
- Just like my daughter and I loved watching the animated version of Moana together when she was younger and became fans of that story–there’s no question that we’d also want to see the live-action version when it hit the theaters.
When your readers love your work, they will be lining up to buy the next thing you create, even if it’s “the same” in many aspects–and they’re gonna tell their friends.
If you’re an email marketer, here are a few ways you can repurpose your emails into other types of digital assets:
- Blog Posts. You can transform an email into a blog post by adding keyword phrases.
- Social Content. You can chop an email into bite-sized segments and transform one email into a month’s worth of social media content.
- Lead Magnets. You can expand an email with more examples, tips, or stories, and turn it into an E-book, PDF, Email Course, or Video, which you can either sell, or give away for free as an Information Product in your lead magnet to help you grow and qualify your email list.
- Podcasts and Youtube. You can take a top performing email, record yourself (or a voice actor) reading it verbatim, and publish it as a podcast episode or Youtube video.
- Content for Niche Websites. You can republish an email on syndicator websites that expose you to new audiences, such as Medium or Substack.
- Audience Hacking. You can “audience hack” and republish the same email you already sent to your list as a guest post on a colleague’s email list, to introduce yourself to a related, but new, audience.
Improve Your Online Writing Game for Your Business
I guarantee you 99% of your competitors aren’t sending weekly emails.
So the fact that you are doing this will set you apart as the leading online educator in your niche, the leading digital authority in your field, and the go-to business that gets the job done for your clients.
Along with that, you’ll be receiving valuable feedback each time your audience replies back to you, which will inform you how to refine and perfect your messaging so that it resonates more clearly.
This iterative process gives you the power to speak to your customers in ways your competitors couldn’t dream up.
When you’re soothing the pains of your niche, week after week, by providing free education about how to solve the problems that plague them, your audience will begin craving your next content release like it was an addictive Netflix series.
Or a story by Walt Disney…
Paul Denni
P.S. Attorneys sick of famine panic: if you want to convert more prospects landing on your website into beloved email subscribers who become your favorite clients and referral partners, send me an email at paul@desertstreamswriting.com.