By the time I had started vanlife, I had completely transitioned my fitness training business from an in person service fulfilled in a privite gym I owned to an online service.
Having an established income made starting vanlife much easier, but being an entrepreneurial person by nature, I had intended to create additional income streams as we traveled. Vanlife itself opened up a whole new audience, and niche to appeal to with social media marketing and content marketing. Build an audience, monetize content, win. This is the basic formula for making money online, and folks adventuring vicariously with us was a potential new source of income.
We could make YouTube videos and TikToks. We could hit the metrics needed to start taking advantage of monetization tools. We could seek out sponsorships. We could create and sell ebooks. We could become affiliate marketers or make money in any number of ways.
And that was the plan… Until it wasn’t.
It was 6 weeks or so into vanlife when I realized I was pretty much over marketing, period. I could take a picture of a beautiful sunset or of a spooky looking tree. I could use these as pattern interrupts and load them with hashtags to get attention on Instagram. I could write a clever little story to go along with it that leads someone on a journey that ends with clicking a link and buying a thing. I know how to do this.
But, I just couldn’t do it anymore. The pictures never did the sunsets any justice. And the spooky tree and I ended up having many lovely conversations that need not be shared on Facebook. All of these experiences seemed like they should remain mine. Personal. Private. Fleeting.
It was honestly a surprise to come to the realization of just how fucked up in the head it makes one to look at everything through the lens of how it can be used for marketing for well over a decade of one’s life. Vanlife was to be about healing, and I”m continued to be surprised by the things that need healing. I digress.
If
I couldn’t capture a moment anyway, why bother trying to share it. And if you can’t share it, it’s not worth trying to monetize. Very quickly I became jaded on the whole idea of marketing in general. And yet, as a generally creative person, I still have the drive to create content.
This leaves me with an evolving personal relationship with the content I create as well as the content I consume. I’ve become hyper-aware of marketing in social media content. Hell, show me any given Facebook or Instagram post and I can probably tell you with a fair degree of certainty which shitty marketing guru the poster has read recently. This is regardless of niche. I recognize it, because I WAS it. And I can say that the creation of the appearance of value rather than the providing of actual value in content hits me in a very visceral way when I read it.
I’ve unfollowed everyone in my own industry, fitness. Even in other niches and communities I enjoy, I’m very quick to hit the unfollow button if I encounter marketing intended to be disguised as sincere content.
Promoting a product or service is one thing. The cookie cutter, NLP driven nonsense that fills web 2 social media is a completely different thing.
So, as I continue to create content, espcially on web 3 platforms where value and sincerity really matter, I’m trying to keep in mind the difference between content marketing, and content creation.
I’ve rambled on a bit here, so I’m grateful for you reading this far. Since you’re reading this on Hive, you know that we have the opportunity to build a much more sincere and value driven internet. In the long run, staying focused on building good content on web 3 is an important strategy to keep in mind. Web 2 may have the eyeballs right now, but there’s very little value being shared or built there.
Marketing is bullshit. Creation is divine.