content marketing vs world-building
this is part of my ongoing series on world-building. I send weekly-ish letters on creative process & digital world-building here.
Before we venture any further into world-building, let’s clarify one thing.
If we define digital world-building as sharing a flow of creations, inspirations, ideas, resources, and more on the internet (obviously, I don’t think of it “content”) — and, a few of these things, may, ultimately, turn into paid offerings… then, I hear you asking:
What is the difference between
building world-building vs. content marketing?
They obviously FEEL very different, but what factors actually distinguish the two? In this post, I’ll share 6 distinctions
The end goal
Reason for existing
Who it’s ultimately for
Process vs. Outcome
Which metrics are important?
Is it replacable?
But before exploring these, I’ll distill it down to one thing.
Energy and Intention is Everything
The main difference between world-building vs. content marketing is the energy and intention you do it with. Energy changes everything.
That is to say, one piece of writing could be part of a “world,” or part of a “content marketing” funnel, depending on the energy you approach it with, the process you take, and the digital environment or ecosystem it’s a part of.
Personally, when I write a piece with a “content marketing” mode in my brain, the end result is vastly different than if I write the same piece with “world-building” context. Every piece I write for “content marketing” purposes feels like a drag and a drain, while I can world-build everyday, without getting tired — on the contrary, it nourishes my soul.
Why is that?
Desire vs. Outcome
The main difference is this:
World-building is born from a desire to create. (See: Who is world-building for?)
Content marketing is a means to an end result.
This DESIRE vs. OUTCOME orientation shapes EVERYTHING. It creates a dichotomy of:
Process vs. Results
Experimentation vs. Expectation
Creating an environment vs. Creating a funnel
This is not to say that worlds cannot sell products or services — I’d actually argue that a world does it better (IF your number one priority is not maximizing profit, but working in integrity and alignment).
To Exist vs. To Sell
The end goal of a digital world is to exist. Period. My world exists through my expression. I build a world because I relish the process of pulling things out of my mind/heart/soul, and digesting it on the (digital page) — and sharing it with whoever comes to visit. It feels tiring in a good way — like going on a good, long run. The more I create for my world, the richer I feel. Sometimes I’ll create and share art, write about what’s inspired me, and other times (like now) what I create is a distillation of my thinking, ideas, and way of seeing the world.
The end goal of content marketing is to sell. A good litmus test is to ask: if this thing wasn’t designed to bring in a profit, somewhere down the line, would it still exist? Most of the blog posts you find ranked on google come with a catch — it’s written as the content marketing of some company or app, trying to sell you something by becoming the “industry thought leader” in this or that topic.
Unconditional Giving vs. Transactionality
Content marketing is always part of a marketing funnel — a way of drawing in visitors, and pointing them to a “freebie” or “lead magnet,” which they’ll serve you in exchange for your email address. It feels transactional because… it is. If you ask A for B, then it establishes a transactional relationship — which means that once the transaction is complete, they can unsubscribe from your list, or never open your emails again.
But when you build a world, your world is not begging your visitors to subscribe, download, or buy anything. A world that simply exists — for itself — is a world that needs nothing from you. And a world that needs nothing from you, but has everything to give — has magnetic power. It’s a place you want to spend time in, because it nourishes you. And the reason it nourishes you is because the world exists, first and foremost, to nourish the creator.
Who is your target audience?
If you are building a world, my guess is that you’re a multi-expressive person with a range of interests, passions, and multiplicity of selves that don’t fit neatly into one box.
Content marketing, however, asks you to define a “customer profile” — and write content tailored to their demographics, problems, and needs. But how can you write FROM your multi-dimensional self, when you have flattened WHO you’re writing to?
Why create for a target audience that is a cardboard cut-out, when you yourself are multi-dimensional?
More importantly: why flatten yourself?
In world-building, I write primarily for myself — and trust that whoever comes to my world will come back because they relate to some part of me — in some deep way. This is based on the assumption that in the personal is the universal.
Against Optimization: being truly unique in an algorithimic world
Because content marketing is a means to an end — then it’s something you want to optimize — by measuring traffic, open rates, click rates, conversion rates, etc. It’s simply a tool that helps you sell something. A means to an end.
Your content marketing becomes something you could outsource, just as long as it gets the job done. But… if your work can be outsourced to another person — or, to AI — then it means that it is replacable.
And if it’s replacable, then that means it will compete with a gazillion other people/businesses offering exactly what you’re offering, and you’ll be drowning in the sea of generic-ness.
In an internet where everything — all our digital interactions — feel algorithmically optimized, to be truly unique — irreplicable, irreplacable — and thus, build authentic, 1:1 relationships with the humans who visit your world — is simply to be totally, uncompromisingly yourself. Human. Just like in real life.
Could I, in a bold, sweeping statement, propose that..
Worlds are made for living, breathing humans to inhabit.
Content marketing is for (and by) the machines/algorithms.
To me, the content marketing mindset feels, to me, like it serves the capitalist/attention-economy profit system. When you visit a site dripping of content marketing, you feel either (a) Ok, what’s the catch? (b) No I don’t want to buy anything (c) Damn, they got me!
I don’t mean to suggest that content marketing is BAD or unhelpful or doesn’t serve a purpose. There is good, useful, valuable content marketing that I enjoy.
But as an artist and creator, I know that whenever I tried to force myself to do “marketing” the traditional way (ie, content marketing, amongst many more things) I always wanted to either (a) kill the project, because I resented it or (b) dread and procrastinate and never do it and (c) hate myself either way.
For me, adopting a world-building mindset in all of my work is what helps me get up in the morning and feel excited to write.
Not because I NEED do it in order to meet some internal expectation or marketing goal. But because I truly, deeply want to.
Because — in elementary terms, content marketing is tiring, boring, and filled with “shoulds.” World-building is fun and soul-nourishing. It feels like art, like play, like something you do even if no one is watching.
I send a weekly letter called guide.notes, on creative process and digital world-building. You can sign up here.