Write about What really Matters to You.

After my first month on Medium, I was tempted to contribute content in various categories to increase my reach. Doing that I found out that there are much better ways to get a genuine audience. It reminded me of playing live music.

For the last four years, I had been playing live music in Costa Rican restaurants. In the beginning, I was mainly singing my favorite songs, but it was not always received well. Imagine playing acoustic versions of Punkrock Songs to a group of tourists from Texas in their 60s.

Someone suggested to me that I should pick different songs for my sets. I learned some Tom Petty songs and freshened up some Neil Young covers that I were able to play. Some people liked it, but not all of them.

The people that originally liked my tunes, started to not show up at my concerts anymore. I lost them with my new song choices that were originally meant to grow my audience. Why was that?

At some point, I got frustrated competing with musicians that are much better at playing these classic rock songs for older audiences. Trying to be like them was the worst decision I ever made.

We will never be as good as the person we are imitating.

I decided to return to my roots and exclusively play songs that I really care about. People started showing up again and I enjoyed myself playing music again.

Of course, the older folks still do not like my style, but there are plenty of other people that might have a different opinion. After all, music is not my main job and therefore it should be an art form.

Taking the artist approach and not thinking too much about the audience is the only way to be truly authentic.

Why am I telling you all of this?

I found out that writing works the same way. When I write about politics, which is my passion, then I get not as many readers as if I would write about cryptocurrencies, dating or other popular topics, but I connect with readers that are just as into politics as I am.

These people will continue reading my latest articles because they see that this is my field of expertise. In exchange, I get to read their articles.

As a writer, we should not primarily try to please the audience or aim at high click-rates. Once we write about topics that really matter to us, the reader will notice that.

Being authentic is the only way to establish honest relationships with our readers. They want to know what the signed up for, just like someone coming to my concert.

Our goal as a musician or author should always be to share something real with our audience. Content should align with who we are, as this is the only way to reach like-minded people.

When we start presenting ourselves in an authentic way, we do not need to worry about the outcome. We will attract people that we like to be around and scare away others that might not like what we do.

We can not please everyone, but we should be mindful of who we please and why we do that.