This Is Not Value

As I sit here trying to think what to write, starting to type these very words that you’re now reading in an effort to delay the fact that I should say something of meaning, I’m still thinking about value. In a piece where I’d like to tell you that this is absolutely Not Value, heaven forbid it’s value, I’m still sat here thinking: “fuck, maybe I’m not providing any value whatsoever”.

Of course, this is Not Value. I don’t care if you read this. I don’t care if you share or like it. I don’t care if you tell your mum or your partner or your dog or your pen friend about this piece. I will write just over 1,000 words here¹ and I’m not concerned how much of it you read. I won’t pore over the analytics. I absolutely won’t be thinking of a catchy click-bait title to draw you in, even though I accidentally wrote one. There is nothing here for you, only things here for me that I wrote because I wanted to.

And whilst that might sound arrogant, it’s not meant to be. I say this because I’m being honest, a trait far too rare in Online World these days. I say this because I’m not trying to convince you to read it. I won’t insult your intelligence. It is your choice how you proceed after this paragraph. We may get along. We may not. You might find something interesting here. You might not. But it’s for you to find out, not for me to sell to you. This is Not Value.

Right, I should stop for a second. Now we’ve lost half of the room I should explain what ‘Value’ is. I forget that not all of you are versed in the Marketing Wankery² I swirl around in every day of my life. If I were you, I’d be thankful of that. But you’re not me, so let me give you a little taste of what you’ll need to know to proceed on with this piece.

Let’s begin with a little explanation of ‘value’, just in case you’re lucky enough to not be familiar with the term. Imagine I’m a marketing guy³, and we’re sat in a meeting together. We’d probably be in NYC or something, high up, looking over the skyline. The table would be far too big for two people, the coffee far too expensive, and the conversation far too polite and trite. You’ve arranged this meeting with me because you’d like to become more well-known. Not because you want to be one of those shitty celebrities who do reality TV shows, but because you want to make more sales, grow your business. That kind of thing. Your intentions are good, but what I’m about to tell you isn’t.

It isn’t unusual or wrong for any of us to want to become more well-known. It has its many benefits, many of which involve us making more money. Money is a driver for a lot of people, and that’s not something I’m about to comment on. If you want to become more well-known, I’ll tell you that what you really need is a ‘personal brand’. You’ll spend time online⁴ providing value. As you Provide Value and Engage, you will become more well-known. People will sign up to your newsletter, watch your YouTube videos (oh yeah you’ll have to do that too), listen to your podcast, read your tweets.

Providing Value—as marketing guys like me use it—simply means to create useful things and provide them for free. Informative stuff. If you’re selling bananas you’d make useful articles and tweets talking about how bananas are a super fruit and everyone should eat them. The formula is basic: to become known as X expert, simply talk about X for a period of time.

After a year or two you will officially be Internet Famous⁵. You’ll have around 50,000-100,000 followers on Twitter and other social platforms, purely because you have been Providing Value. Job done. Probably. That’s Providing Value.

Of course, there’s many problems with this way of doing “marketing”. The primary issue with it is that everybody is doing it, therefore nobody is paying attention to anything that anybody says any longer. The web has become so full of Valuable Content, bursting at the seams with it, seeping out of every internet orifice like black tar, that you couldn’t sit down and consume any of it even if you wanted to.

And then there’s the basic formula that precedes all this: to become known as X expert, simply talk about X for a period of time. It’s too basic, too infantile. I come across 10 ‘experts’ every day (usually on LinkedIn) spending all day long writing about their expertise. Nobody is reading it. Why? Because it’s boring, obvious, and blatantly self-serving.

So what is the answer?

Who knows.

If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

The answer is simple, but very complicated. The answer is to be yourself in a world full of people telling you to Be Yourself but not really meaning it. The answer is to make art, not Provide Value. The answer is to make things you want to make, put them out into the world, and not expect anything from it. The answer is to expect nothing, because the problem with Providing Value is that there’s an expected transaction⁶ from it, like when you walk in a store and they say “is there anything I can help you with?” and you immediately say no. You don’t want to buy something, yet. You want to enjoy.

We all want to just enjoy. Our time online—for good or ill—has increased. We use our phones too frequently, but we don’t use them to Read Some Excellent Value. We don’t expect to receive value. We rarely want to read 7 Things About Why We Should be More Productive. We want to escape, to enjoy. We want to have a good time, not to be digitally finger-wagged at, told we’re not good enough and the 7 ways we can be better. Value is prescriptive, because it tries to create an expertise. Most will reject it. No, what we all want is to just have fun. We want to work with people and get to know people who we enjoy spending time with. We don’t want to spend time with people who tell us how shit we are.

Whilst my fictional NYC marketing self would have told you to provide value, my real-life marketing self wouldn’t tell you anything of the sort. My real-life marketing self would tell you to do whatever the hell you want, so long as you enjoy it. Make art, not content. Make things without the metrics in mind. Make good shit, because when we make good shit, good shit happens.

And you you know This Is Not Value, because Value doesn’t allow swearing.

Shit.

1. I write my pieces without planning them, which is why the tense is weird. I don’t go back to correct them, so as I write this the tense and the tone of the piece is correct. I insincerely apologise.

2. That’s a technical term, taken from Seth Godin’s New York Times Bestseller, This Is Marketing Wankery.

3. Aside from the NYC bit, I am actually a marketing guy. So this isn’t hard to imagine. At least, for me it isn’t.

Sorry, I mention NYC in the next sentence. That’s a bit of a spoiler alert there, all neatly wrapped up in an actual spoiler.

Spoiler alert.

4. Well, somebody else will spend time online pretending to be you. But nobody needs to know that.

5. Note: this is the dream you are sold. This rarely happens. But the piece would’ve ended here if you hadn’t become famous, so let’s suspend belief for a while.

6. The idea of the web being transactional came from this excellent conversation between Thomas J Bevan and Luke Burgis