As a paid media specialist, words aren’t my first language. So far, I’ve produced two articles for Mad Fish Digital. Since, I’ve been trying to figure out why there was no satisfaction that came from these first attempts. To write in a professional guise on topics that I’m very keen on, appeared to be a simple undertaking. That was my first error.
I’m knee deep in pivot tables, customized Google Analytics reports, Supermetrics queries, and DataStudio reports most of the time. For that reason, these have become my professional “home”. The comfort found in mathematics doesn’t translate to writing. I would start out with passionate explosions of thoughts instead of formulated outlines. I read blogs by far more experienced writers to dictated where my article should head next.
The writing process
This reflection lead to a deluge of backspaces. I’d attempt to put my thoughts into a commonplace structure for blog articles. I thought readers would find numbers boring. It’d be more readable if I stuck to succinct, three-point paragraph post. This went against my nature, only showing a snack-sized summary of our successes. However, companies rarely publish case studies that draw attention to moderate results. Even rarer do they discuss campaigns that failed to perform up to expectation. As a result, the campaigns that are the focal point of most case studies aren’t standalone entities, but the culmination of learned insights from the preceding moderate campaigns. In trying to produce a case study that appealed to readers, my voice fell to the wayside.
If you ask my coworkers, they’ll likely tell you that my solutions will involve Google Tag Manager or Supermetrics… Ideally both. As a result, I thought writing this article on Google Tag Manager will be a breeze. I would rewrite the article after hitting a roadblock. Each new version drifted further from what I intended to say at the outset. I hoped that the final product would be far more appealing to the average reader.
Changing things up
As a numbers guy, writing is excruciating. I’m blown away that people enjoy it. After finishing this article, I was pretty done with writing. Stay in your lane and do what you do best, right? Not quite. I’m comfortable admitting that I’m uninformed on most subjects as a 20-something. I’m skeptical of peers who claim to be “experts” at this early stage of their career. I’m interested in content that discusses the errors which generated learning opportunities. Instead, almost all content focuses on how others have emerged victorious from problems.
As a result, considering yourself an authority on the topic felt like a precursor to writing about it. I’ve come to realize is that it takes courage to invest your voice and perspective into a piece of content. Authoring quality content requires balancing your voice with the interests of your audience. However, the first two attempts to write posts felt like failures. I ignored my voice and style and focused on what “good content” looked like.
My goal for the future is to continue to curate posts that focused on the not-so-glamorous events. I’ll share details from my growth, even if they aren’t traditional success stories or query based how-to’s.
