I remember hearing a story somewhere (I’ll look it up in a minute) about an artist talking about going into schools and asking the “artists” in the class to raise their hands. In early grades, say Kindergarten through third, almost every kid in the class shot their arm up and waved it around, not only an artist but excited about it! By the time they got to sixth grade, hardly any kids raise their hands. And the ones that do, well there are two types: The first raise their hand stridently, looking straight ahead, knowing the class recognizes them as “the arty one.” If they raise their hands at all, the second type is tentative and looks around, hoping no one will roll their eyes.
I’m not here today to get into why this happens (although it sounds like a great discussion to have). I want to talk about how it is still happening in our adult life when it comes to “content creators.”
Imagine this… you’re nine years old, in a stifling hot classroom with the alphabet in cursive lining the wall next to the ceiling. You’re sitting in a chair attached to your desk, thinking about pulling the ponytail of the girl in front of you and wondering if you’ll be able to hold the king square at recess (Haime always cheats and spins it!) when the mom of your best friend Asher walks into the room (she makes fantastic cinnamon toast). You haven’t been listening to the teacher, so you’ve missed the introduction he just made, and now you’re wondering why she’s there. As she stands in front of the room, your eyes are drawn to the blackboard behind her, and you see “Career Day” scrawled behind her in big cursive letters. You sit up a little straighter and listen. This might actually be interesting.
When she starts her talk with the question, “who here wants to be a ‘content creator’ when you grow up?” you and all your friends shoot your hands up. After all, you all watch all the cool stuff on Youtube all the time, right? (Yes, I’m mixing my generations) I mean, did you see the last Dude Perfect video? Who wouldn’t want to do that when they grew up? Heck, kids are doing it now. You may not use these words, but what you think is this:
She keeps talking, and no offense to Asher’s mom, but what she tells you about her career as a content creator sounds pretty boring. She basically gives you the Wikipedia version:
Content creation is the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts.
The Wikipedia version is always boring.
Now you’re all grown up, and you know what? Asher’s mom was laying down some truth. The “Content Creators” (notice the caps) out there don’t want this to get out, but we’re creating and publishing content all the time.
If you sent an email today to a bunch of B2B customers about a new product or promotion, you are a content creator.
If you wrote and sent a newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports, you are a content creator.
If you put together a transactional campaign for your eCommerce site, you are a content creator.
Content creation is not only for the “Creatives” out there, just like art isn’t just for the “Artists” out there. If you put together some information and need to get it out to a group of people, and most of us do, you are a content creator.
There are hundreds of tools out there for people to create and distribute content—everything from the broadest email tool to the most focused SMS tool. If you have a specific need, you can find a tool that addresses that particular need. If you are in a specific business vertical, a tool is probably out there for that particular vertical.
Wisyl is a little different. We’ve built Wisyl for humans. Humans who need to send information to groups of other humans who need it. It is a tool for the real-life content-creating humans out there who need to get people to pay attention to the information they are sending and act on it.
When you need to get content to people, you need a tool that does a few simple things
- Onboard your recipients.
You need to have a list of people to deliver your content. Call them what you want, subscribers, readers, customers, students, players, friends, parents. You get the idea. - Create some content.
It usually comes down to words and images. Sometimes the images move. - Deliver the content.
You might want to send it right away, or you might like to schedule it for later. You might need to send it to the whole group, or you might want to send it to a segment of that group, or maybe just one human in your group. - Give your recipients something to act on.
It could be a link, it might be some instructions, you might want them to answer a question or ask a question back. You might just want them to think about something. - See how they acted on your content.
To the extent that you can, you want to know what happened with your content with at least some basic reporting.
Wisyl does all of that. Those are the features you’d expect of any content delivery tool. Like we said before, Wisyl is different. And in this case, different is better.
We figure you’ve got something important to share, or you wouldn’t be wasting your time with it. When you use Wisyl to share your content, you have the best chance of getting your subscribers to pay attention because Wisyl does things other tools don’t.
Wisyl asks your subscribers where they want to get your content.
The first thing your subscribers do when they sign up to receive your content is tell you exactly where they’d like to get it. We’re always adding new channels, and, as of today, your subscribers can choose to receive your content on one or more of these popular platforms.
- Text
- Twitter DM
- Discord
- Slack
- Telegram
- More coming soon!
Wisyl asks your subscribers when they want to get your content.
You’re sending your content to humans—people who have a lot going on in their lives. If Pat wants to have their coffee and ease into their morning before they see your content, Pat should be able to do that.
Wisyl delivers your content based on your subscribers’ preferences.
Just by asking your subscribers for their preferences, you create a different type of relationship with your audience. To respect that relationship, Wisyl makes it easy for you to create your content once and deliver it to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. All based on your subscribers’ preferences. We know that over 50% of humans want the ability to choose how they get their content. The other 50% just didn’t know they had a choice!
We’ve built Wisyl for content creators. Now that we’ve established that you are as much of a content creator as the long-haired dude with an accent, slouching in his chair as he “creates” (Don’t @ me. It’s not a generalization, it’s a spot-on description of a designer I once worked with), it is clear that what Asher’s mom said all those years ago is as accurate today as it was when you were trying to hold the king square at recess:
As a content creator, you have one purpose: get people to pay attention to your content.
We’ve created Wisyl to do just that. Give it a try.
