Even as I sit here writing this I have to ask myself the question..."What am I writing and why?"
Is it "Advice?". Is it a "Story?" Is it a "Media" post?
Well, the reason I am writing this post is because I am interested in reflecting on the idea on whether giving advice is a good thing to do in content creation. In addition it makes me pause and think about what is good "Content"?
I'm not in the least bit interested in adding to the millions of absurdities presented in todays media landscape to get attention. Also, using other people's names and resources is while not a bad thing to do, it is in effect a zero benefit.
But, let's get back to giving advice as a general rule, which possibly could be construed as "advice" itself.
There are many kinds of content. But what constitutes really good and useful content?
Entertainment
Entertainment is one of the most powerful tools of content in history. So, if you want to go into producing entertainment content there is certainly a place for it in the world, even if the world is already saturated with it. Not everyone has to laugh at your jokes. Not everyone has to like your songs. Not everyone has to appreciate your art. Your audience is the only people who have to enjoy what you produce and that is enough to do well in life.
The world of entertainment is a huge field that includes music, stage works, films, dance, TV, art, comics, even electronic and normal games go under the rubric of entertainment.
Research
Content is huge in academia. In fact, the whole point of getting a PhD in something is to learn how to create content based on solid techniques of research. A lot of this is to solve a problem or to explain the issue in depth as an observation in order to better understand the world we live in. Everything can be researched and written about and it doesn't necessarily have to be at the PhD level of scientific writing.
Education
The "How to" method of creating content. You take something that you like doing or that you are good at and create content around that. Let's say you are good at cooking a soufflé. You create content on how to do that the right way every time. The better you are at explaining things, the better your content is. This can be anything from simple math to complicated physics equations.
Another form of Education is breaking down something complicated into something that is more accessible to people. For instance, people like Leonard Bernstein (conductor/composer), Dr. Carl Sagan (Physics), and Michio Kaku (Physics) were able to do programs that explained their field in an interesting and compelling manner. This takes either a lot of knowledge from experience and study or a lot of research. At any rate, the ability to not only explain something complicated in a way that normal people can understand, you also have to be interesting to listen to and or watch. Part of this is having a media team to do some of the techie stuff so it is well put together.
Advice
Advice is cheap. One of the problems with content creation today is you have a lot of people giving advice that have no actual expertise in what they are talking about. The famous "Monday morning quarterback" is the person who has never been an NFL quarterback yet deems themselves capable of telling people how it should be done. It is difficult to give advice to someone you don't know and even if you do know them it is still not a good idea.
Reviews
Reviews are good to do because all you are doing is pointing out things about what something is and not necessarily commenting on it with opinion. This is somewhat like "news", because it shouldn't have opinion entangled with it but rather simply state what it is.
Books and the beauty of the written word.
Books are a good thing to create. It gives you time to organize your thoughts and eliminate noise in your communication. There are so many types of books and which type of book you want to write is worth choosing well. I am no story teller for instance. For me to construct a novel that is worth reading is highly unlikely for me. But, I can write a book about my life experience in a compelling way. There are no limits on the size and scope of books, so you can make it as long or brief as you want.
So, in the world of personal development you have a lot of people giving advice mostly rehashed from some guru they learned it from. There is a little bit of "I'm the smartest person in the room." thing going on in this genre. The cleverest is somehow admired too much.
Going forward I want to concentrate on real content that is actually useful to people and not give a lot of advice on how to do something.
So wish me luck!