Does creating content for your business feel like you’re spinning your wheels?
Pouring hours into posts that no one reads feels like a waste of time.
You’re staying consistent, but you might get a few likes, comments, and maybe get a viral hit, but your business isn’t growing.
I’ve felt your pain.
I’ve used content to grow my shop from $0 to $500K, but it didn’t start out that way.
For the first year, it felt like nothing worked. My follower count grew, but our revenue stayed the same. I felt discouraged, I thought about giving up on content and spending money on paid ads, but then I realized that the problem wasn’t my content; the problem was how I used it.
The most common social media advice is “just stay consistent,” but consistency isn’t enough if you’re consistently making the wrong moves.
Many founders, despite their best efforts, get caught in four specific traps that sabotage their results and keep them stuck.
The problem isn’t consistency, the problem is that you don’t understand that the point of making content is to gain clients. The only metric that matters is your profit and loss statement.
It’s time to identify and dismantle these traps so you can build a system that turns your writing into business growth.
Trap #1: Comparing Your Day 1 to Their Year 10
At some point, everyone gets caught in the constant trap of comparison.
Comparison itself isn’t the problem, it’s that you’re comparing your beginning to someone else’s 10-year journey.
When I look at someone like Ali Abdaal, who is in the same umbrella niche as me, I see someone who has 7 million subscribers on YouTube.
It would be easy for me to say, “I can’t compete with that,” but what I’ve realized is that while I’m competing with him for attention, I’m not considering how long he’s been at it. Ali has been making videos for as long as I’ve had a YouTube account; if I were to start posting YouTube videos today, how could I expect to be anywhere close to that level?
Falling into this comparison trap doesn’t just hurt; it leads to paralysis, making you wonder if you should even try.
But, here’s the flip side: Instead of allowing yourself to feel inadequate, use their success to your advantage.
The early stages of content creation require a lot of trial-and-error, but the larger names in your niche have already figured out what works for your target audience. Don’t read their content for entertainment, study it. Go back to the beginning of their journey and find the moment when everything changed.
When you find it, borrow it.
I’m not talking about plagiarizing or copying them word for word, I’m talking about exploring your own angle. Think about your perspective, your experience, and write about the same topic in a way that reflects your life. You don’t always have to agree with them; sometimes that’s better, people love contrarian views and notice when someone wants to stir the pot.
Study what worked for someone else and use their success as a roadmap to skip the beginning stages of trial-and-error.
Trap #2: Trying to Be Everything to Everyone
You might be creating high-quality content, but that isn’t the problem — it’s that no one knows who your content is for.
You’ll hear phrases like “you are the niche” and “you don’t need to niche down” get thrown around. This is sound advice, but the biggest mistake I see people make is in their interpretation. Niching down doesn’t mean limiting yourself; it means getting specific about the problem you solve and who you solve it for.
You can write about whatever you want, just make sure that you’re writing it for the right person. I write about digital writing, business, books, and other creators. These can seem unrelated, but they’re always framed for one group.
When someone visits your page, there are four things they need to see:
1. Who do you help?
2. What do you help them do?
3. How do you help them do it?
4. Why should they trust you?
Let’s analyze my bio:
“Helping founders use writing to grow their business by turning content into clients. 10+ years of building $500K businesses with small audiences.”
1. Who I help: Founders and aspiring entrepreneurs.
2. What I help them do: turn content into clients.
3. How I help them: Teaching them how to write.
4. Why they should trust me: 10 years of experience.
If someone who is starting their business visits my profile, they immediately know that I’m the person who can help.
Before we move on, there’s one thing I need to address.
Trust doesn’t come from flashing your credentials, it comes from consistently delivering value over time. With that in mind, don’t treat your content as isolated pieces; view it as a giant library.
Every piece should build upon the last, reinforcing your core message and demonstrating your expertise. If someone visits your library, they should be incentivized to continue scrolling because they see content that’s relevant and valuable to them. That means that no matter what you choose to write, you should always frame it in a way that stays on brand.
I write about books, business, digital writing, and any topic that comes to mind, but it’s always framed in a way that teaches founders and aspiring entrepreneurs something new.
You don’t have to niche down, but you do need a deep understanding of the niche you’re in.
Maintain that focus, filter your ideals through the eyes of a potential client, and build a valuable content library that proves you’re the person who can solve their problems.
Trap #3: Chasing Viral Fame Instead of Valuable Clients
Views matter, but most founders and digital writers focus on making viral content instead of focusing on making content that grows their business.
It’s easy to see accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and believe that the only way to achieve the same level of success is to do the same.
When you look at accounts like Nicolas Cole, who has over 400,000 followers, what you’ll realize is that he was making millions as a ghostwriter before anyone knew his name.
Making content with the intention of going viral leads to an audience who just wants to see viral content, and an audience that wants to be entertained isn’t an audience that’s ready to become clients.
The goal isn’t to get views for the sake of views. The goal is to cast a wide net, then filter your audience down to followers with the highest chance of becoming clients.
Dakota Robertson’s GAP framework is something every entrepreneur should know.
Growth, authority, personality.
Growth content is the net you cast to capture a wide audience.
Authority content tells your audience what you’re about and the value you provide.
Personality content makes you human, shows what makes you unique, and nurtures the relationship between your audience and yourself.
Every day, someone walks into my shop and says, “I had no clue you were here.” We’ve been there for 8 years, but our audience isn’t huge.
We have 800 social media subscribers and 1,300 newsletter subscribers, but I’ve learned that chasing more followers doesn’t make money — nurturing the relationships with my current clients is how to maximize my ROI. We’re currently bringing in roughly $30,000 per month, and every time I send an email, we see a flood of additional sales.
Why does this happen?
Our content isn’t meant to entertain. It’s meant to call out a problem our ideal customer has and offer them the solution.
Instead of using views to measure success, celebrate posts that get one thoughtful comment from an ideal client or drive a qualified lead to your email list.
Your most valuable content isn’t always the content that gets the most views.
Trap #4: Focusing On The Wrong Metrics
It’s easy to chase the dopamine hit in the form of likes, views, and follows, but that takes your focus away from the metrics that measure the growth of your business.
Growing your following is important — that number increases your credibility and acts as an audience the algorithm can use as a test — but the problem is that most founders and digital writers stop there instead of viewing social media as the top of their sales funnel.
In order to grow your business, you need them to reach the bottom.
There are three levels to your funnel:
1. Converting a new viewer into a follower.
2. Converting a follower into an email subscriber.
3. Converting an email subscriber into a client.
The metrics that matter exist in level 3.
1. What is the ratio of new email subscribers to unsubscribes?
2. What is your email open rate?
3. What is the click-through rate from emails to your landing page?
4. And, most importantly, how many clicks are becoming clients?
I cared about the number of followers my business gained until I realized followers don’t equal dollars.
Remember this: The quality and engagement of your followers matter more than the number of followers you have.
Don’t confuse that with the idea that follower count doesn’t matter. The number of new monthly followers measures the effectiveness and quality of your content; however, what I’ve realized is that click-through rate matters most.
Your goal is to create content with enough value to make someone say, “I need more.”
When they need more, make sure that finding your email list is easy. If you aren’t using a call to action at least once per day, you’re leaving attention and money on the table.
Followers are a borrowed audience that can be taken away, email subscribers are an owned audience that you can keep forever.
That owned audience is where your potential clients live.
Remember, your content isn’t about you; it’s about calling out a problem and demonstrating why you’re the person who can solve it.
If you have 5,000 followers and a steadily growing business, that’s better than 500,000 followers that barely make you a dollar.
There’s one thing to keep in mind: you are not your business.
Your metrics measure the strength of your systems and business, they are not your self-worth.
The beginning stages will be hard, but never confuse the numbers with your personal value.