The content nobody likes (but everyone remembers)

A piece of content I wrote about my panic attack and then recovering from burnout two years ago still generates emails to my inbox today.

Not comments or likes. Actual emails from people telling me it changed how they approach their work. And how it played a part in finally giving themselves permission to rest. The link I included still gets clicked, and I can track sales here and there to a post that's almost two years old. That’s wild.

Meanwhile, my "viral" posts with 5,000,000+ impressions have basically disappeared into the void. I don’t get emails about them. Nobody tells me they’ve made a big impact on their life. And they’ve led to surprisingly few sales.

This taught me something really important about creating content:

The content that changes lives rarely goes viral. And the content that goes viral rarely changes lives.

The safe content problem

Viral content is safe by design. It has to be.

To get massive reach, you need massive agreement. So, most creators share productivity tips everyone already knows, motivational quotes that confirm existing beliefs, and surface-level advice packaged in pretty graphics.

I know because I've done it for years.

My most viral post ever was a short post about how you need to “build your own thing” that has nearly 11 million views. I knew it would go viral when I screenshotted the Tweet. It generated less than 10 customers and changed exactly zero lives. Nobody has ever written me an email telling me how much this post made an impact.

Compare that to the post I referenced above, where I talked about my panic attack I had in 2018. One where I shared two pictures of myself, clearly a changed person who was recovering. Where I explained how I rebuilt my life and work.

That post reached 130,000 people. But they were the right 130,000 people. People who saw themselves in my story. I can track 47 sales from folks who clicked on the article, read it, and made a purchase. Over a year later, people still reference it when they email me.

The 11 million who saw my viral post? They scrolled past and forgot it by lunch. The 130,000 who read my burnout story? They saved it, shared it with friends, and changed how they work and live.

Why transformation beats information

After six years of writing online, I can say with 100% certainty that people don't trust perfection.

They trust transformation.

When you only share your wins, you create distance. When you share the struggle that led to the win, you create a connection.

Let me show you what I mean. Here's the same story, told two ways:‍

Version 1 (what most people write): "I launched my course and made $100K in the first week. Here are my 3 launch strategies..."

Version 2 (what actually creates change): "I launched my course to my email list of 5,000 people. Three people bought. I spent the next 48 hours convinced I'd ruined my reputation, questioning every decision, and drafting an apology email I never sent. Then I realized I'd been messaging the benefits completely wrong. When I changed my approach and relaunched six months later, I made $50K in a week."

The first version might get shared. The second version gets remembered and acted on.

The pattern that actually works

I copy/pasted a spreadsheet of over 100 posts I’ve written that created real impact for my readers into ChatGPT, and I found a pattern:

Specific struggle + specific transformation = lasting change

Not some vague tension. Not a generic transformation. Specific moments where everything shifted.

Like when I wrote about showing up to my first creator coaching client back in 2020. How I was nervous as hell. How I prepared for hours. How I had notecards and spreadsheets, and everything all ready to go. When we started our meeting, I was shocked to find that he didn’t have a marketing strategy, any appropriate technology, and wasn’t measuring his content analytics effectively.

That post didn't just give people permission to do more coaching. It put them in the room there with me. They felt the nervousness, the surprise, and the shift. And then they booked a coaching call with me. Transformed reader and transformed business.

A real example

Last year, I started coaching a pretty well-known creator who had been following another influencer's advice. It had basically destroyed his business. Not because he wasn’t getting seen or read. The opposite was actually true. His impressions had skyrocketed. Unfortunately, his revenue plummeted.

Three months in, he started doing the math: He was spending 2 hours daily on content that generated less business than his old approach. But he kept going because the vanity metrics looked good.

The breaking point came when a long-time reader emailed him and said, "Your content used to help me think differently. I don’t get that feeling anymore."

That hurt him. Because he knew the young lady who emailed him was right.

I taught him to go back to his old content. The stuff that actually drove business. The stories we shaped together weren't optimized. They broke the "rules." One of our best-performing pieces started with a full story about getting blindsided by a previous boss and how he transformed his life and career during this bottom-of-the-barrel moment. These were real stories about real problems he'd overcome and what happened next is his life.

He stopped chasing virality and started sharing deeper stories. His impressions fell by about 15% and his revenue increased by 240%. That’s a massive win in my book.

The influencer he was originally following probably wasn't wrong. His advice likely works for his specific business model. But my new client had been so focused on following someone else's playbook that he forgot what actually worked for him.

Why we can't stop chasing

The truth is, I still feel pulled by the likes, comments, and reshares.

When a post gets 20,000 views instead of 200,000, I sometimes feel like I'm failing. When I see some other creator going viral every single day, I wonder if I'm missing out. That dopamine hit from the notifications is real, and pretending otherwise would be totally dishonest.

But then I take a deep breath and remember that my bills aren’t paid by likes on my content. The impact that I have on readers isn't measured solely by reshares. And the emails that say "this changed everything for me" never come from viral content.

They come from the posts where I told the truth about something that scared the shit out of me.

The bottom line

Your best content likely isn't your most popular content. It's the content that made someone change their mind, their work, or their life.

So the next time you sit down to write, don't ask "What will get engagement?"

Ask "What painful truth am I afraid to share?"

That's how you transform.

That's all for this week.

See you next Saturday.

P.S. If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn in ways that actually generate revenue instead of just likes, comments, and reshares, join 40,000+ people who have gone through my simple 90-minute LinkedIn Operating System.