Browsing the freelancer writers’ community on Reddit today I came across an interesting post from /u/Penguin-Pete.

‘Pete’ asked ‘How Do Content Marketers Market Themselves?’.

Pete described a trajectory that sounded quite a bit like my own — including the fact that he’s a writer and Linux enthusiast. There aren’t too many of us.

He started blogging about Linux. And then transitioned into more generalist freelance writing. However, he found that the only traction he was gaining— from a personal branding perspective at least — came from being cited in obscure sources. More irksome still, he found that what he wrote about had become outdated as technology evolved.

Or as Penguin Pete put it more colorfully:

I was syndicated in an online magazine, cited in Wikipedia on arcane tech topics, and to this day you’ll find my website credited in programming language manuals, pointing to dead links. All gone, and there’s no going back either. Modern audiences are 90% mobile, nobody needs command line tutorials to script on a phone.

These days — perhaps, one senses, in a bid to accrue that limelight which he never did — Penguin Pete says that he is active on many fronts.

He writes about more mainstream topics such as content marketing but finds that he (or she) “ends up in the blender with the rest of the chum” (Penguin Pete, if you ever read this — I loved how colorful all your descriptions were!).

He’s all over social media. He ensures that he receives as many byline opportunities as he possibly can. But he thinks that few people are interested in finding out more about the author.

In short, Penguin Pete seems to feel like he is trapped in obscurity but can’t think of a way out. Reading his post, you get the sense that that fact pains him.

And then he adds.

“Nobody Else Seems To Be Doing Better”

“Nobody Else Seems To Be Doing Better”

This is the part of Penguin Pete’s prosaic post that really piqued my interest.

He adds:

“Every other freelancer I work with has the same experience. We’re all stuck being the anonymous voice of the web. Nobody seeks out a blogger by brand name …. Even the big names in content marketing we have (like Seth Godin) are only famous to other bloggers, not clients.”

The curious thing is that despite accruing little notoriety, Pete’s work — like mine right now — seems to be going well. The irony is that Peter and I are both likely in the business of helping are clients raise their public stature and reach larger audiences. It’s just that we can’t replicate the fruits of that labor for our own personal brands. It’s almost as if the system we’re a part of precludes the cogs who turn the wheels of content marketing from themselves become well-known.

Pete says that he picks up referrals and seems to be doing well on marketplaces like Upwork. But ultimately, and in spite of this success, he feels stuck from a personal branding perspective. And, ironically, the busier he gets the less time he has to work on branding.

He concludes by asking:

“Have any of you tried to climb out of the pit of anonymous typists and make a brand name for yourself? How is it there’s professional Instagrammers out there with zero skills who are famous just for being famous, but people who work for a living can hardly own their own name anymore.”

Content Marketers Make The Internet Run

Penguin Pete’s post struck a nerve with me because I get exactly where he is coming from.

I could rebut his point by pointing to the existence of freelance writers that have attracted some degree of notoriety in the freelance writing world — and in fact to further the debate I did. But truth be told, outside of that small bubble, these freelance writing gurus remain relatively dim lights on the firmament of the internet and the world at large.

As Penguin Pete alludes to, freelance content marketing writers sort of make the internet run. But the problem is that, for the most part, they’re cogs in a marketing wheel — not thought leaders. They have voices, but they’re never heard — at least within the content of their work. Their voice, to the outside world, is synonymous with that of the brands which they write for.

This doesn’t detract from the somewhat cruel nature of the irony that Penguin Pete is alluding to here.

You probably spend a good chunk of your day reading articles and blogs and listicles and consumer technology reviews. You’re likely interested in the content and how that can benefit you. You may even have acted on content marketing and bought a product without knowing it. But you don’t really stop to think who actually writes all this stuff. If you see a name, as Penguin Pete says, you probably don’t stop to read their bio or think about the person behind the prose. And that’s because if the author and the brand are the same, then the reader doesn’t likely consider the author worthy of independent attention.

Penguin Pete (should I just start saying ‘PP’?) later adds in a comment reply

“Content marketing on the Internet is the backbone of world commerce right now! We should unite and demand star billing!”

But for most part content marketers are neither stars nor star billers.

My Thoughts: Nobody Really Cares About Content Marketing — Except (Perhaps) Content Marketers

I feel Penguin Pete’s frustrations.

Truth be told, I too thirst to make an impact upon the world. As a fellow obscure writer, I, like Penguin Pete, languish in relative obscurity.

But even my brief sojourn into journalism— founding a student news website, interning at and reporting for a major news website — undoubtedly paved the road to non-obscurity in a much more appreciable way than being a content marketer have.

Despite Cork Student News being nothing more than a non-official website covering happenings at University College Cork, a petition my website ran was featured in national media. I got to interview CEOs and politicians. To land an internship for Irish Central in New York City which saw me doing everything from spending time mingling with Irish-Americans in upstate New York to flying down to Florida to cover an Irish dancing finals. Down the line, that afforded me the privilege of being able to cover a state visit first hand as part of an official media pool. I even appeared on Canadian national television offering my prognostics about whether the Irish government would need an EMF bailout. It opened doors. Beyond obscurity.

The differences? I was involved in creating an informational product that people chose to consume. And even if it were less lucrative than content marketing, people were more interested in knowing who was behind the words.

The truth about content marketing — particularly if a lot of what you do isn’t bylined — is that it’s almost built for obscurity.

And I believe that’s because content marketing — make that marketing in general — is ultimately concerned with paving the way for sales. As a general rule, people try to close their doors to any form of advertising — whether it’s explicit (a TV spot — buy this car!) or more subtle (here’s our latest blog — read this and maybe buy from us down the line).

People don’t really want to hear the messaging of this content much less know who devised and executed those campaigns.

Clients, for their part, are interested in knowing whether the projects they invest in are producing positive ROI. If they’re thinking about hiring you as a content writer, then they’re interested in knowing whether or not you’re good.

Hence why, as Penguin Pete observed, it’s possible to be a successful content marketing writer while remaining … well, completely unknown to the world at large.

In my comment reply to Penguin Pete’s post I drew a distinction between content marketing writers and writers whose output does make a neutral or positive impact upon the viewer. It’s much the same distinction as I drew above, but let me give an example at a more appropriate level of scale.

If you’re enjoying the first season of Teheran then you might be interested in learning more about the scribes who put together the script for the show that you’re watching. What’s their background? Did they work with the Mossad to make the plot lines credible?

I posit that resolving the answers to these questions is a much more compelling endeavor for your average human than ascertaining what makes the person that wrote “Why Our Breakfast Cereal Is The Best” get up in the morning. We’re happy to let the second author remain an anonymous collection of pixels. The first is somebody we might credibly want to engage in. And it’s this curiosity that I believe drives stardom.

I, like Penguin Pete, aspire to make my mark on the world. But realistically a field’s potential for fame is tied to what it helps achieve for the world at large. I know that however professionally satisfying and lucrative what I’m currently doing is, it’s not the right paradigm within which to make that happen.

Because in the minds of most consumers, content marketing is white noise. If there’s signal at all, it’s mildly interesting information, but information that is squarely tainted by the authoring party’s ulterior motive.

This, in a nutshell, is why I believe one doesn’t find many famous content marketing writers.

If Penguin Pete is aspiring towards greater recognition, then I humbly suggests that he writes a book (just a non promotional one). Or founds a startup that does something useful. Or screen-writes a notable movie.

Because the rest, to the majority of the world at least, is noise. And those that write it are probably destined — in the words of Penguin Pete — to remain confined in the “pit of anonymous typists.” Even if it’s the pit that makes the internet turn.

Disclaimer: My opinions are liable to fluctuate from day to day and depending upon how many hours I slept the preceding night and when I last ate. My thoughts here reflect my thinking at the time of publication only.