The pepper on the cake

When I was really young my parents used to take care of my birthdays and organize small parties with the family. It was really nice mainly because we had cake. I remember how when I was around 8 years old, right after everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to me (which let's be honest, EVERYONE hates), my godfather decided to put a green pepper on my cake.

It was a fun thing and we all laughed, but now that I think about it, you can look at your content and everything you do, the way my cake looked that day. Of course my godfather didn't intend to do anything philosophical, he just wanted to do something funny but his gesture still inspired me to write this.

Anyway, the way I used to look at content was both pretty simple and limiting - you acquire a skill and with the help of that skill you work towards entertaining, educating or guiding people by creating a certain type of content. Some write articles, some write books, others create videos or animations, other people sing while others create video games.

I always saw content creators as people who did one thing really well. For a long time I thought that those creating videos should only create videos and those who write should only write. I couldn't imagine a writer creating videos, because... well... he's a writer. He should write.

But now that I experienced content creation myself, I understand how important diversity can be. Sometimes, a pepper (something not really sweet, something green and something that should be eaten with proper food, not cake) on a cake (the content you made until this moment, the type of content your audience is used to) can make a huge difference and bring joy to those witnessing this weird combination.

It doesn't mean that's the only way you should prepare cake from now on, but it can be a fun addition from time to time, just for the sake of doing it. Okay, leaving cake aside, here's what I mean - the type of content you create could be amazing, and if that's the case, congratulations. But it may need some diversity.

People hate change and if you go from writing to video creation you may lose a big part of your audience. However, publishing a video and sharing it with the people reading your articles from time to time, could be a huge improvement and it may attract a lot of new people.

Even if you don't change the type of content you publish, you can change the format a little bit. If you write educative articles, it wouldn't hurt to write something funny as well. If you try to share some knowledge you learned in the past with those following you (like I do), it wouldn't hurt to approach a different topic, not related to knowledge, like a game review.

It's okay to have a clear image of what type of content you want to create, but for your audience, the fact that you're writing about the same subjects again and again could get boring and make them orient towards other content creators who spice things a little bit with something different from time to time.

Maybe this is (or isn't) the greatest idea ever - what I know is that it doesn't hurt to try. Your audience won't leave just because you publish something different sometimes and who knows, it may actually bring more people to your community. Just put a pepper on your cake and see what happens - usually people laugh.