The first time I saw Michelangelo’s David in person, I wept. Never in my life have I witnessed a more beautiful piece of content.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Museum patrons all around me were looking up from their phones to admire David as well. Despite it being legacy content, David was so scrollstoppingly captivating that it generated stronger engagement than TikTok and Instagram combined, despite those platforms offering fresher, more personally relevant content.

My awe only grew when I noticed the museum gift shop converting 60% of its traffic, numbers that would make any content creator salivate.

Hopefully that sounded absurd🔗

If you read the first few paragraphs of this post and found yourself nodding in agreement, I regret to inform you that you’re a LinkedIn spambot.

We’re not quite at the point where we call Michelangelo a “content creator,” but we’re getting closer every year.

The term “content” started when business owners needed a term to describe every kind of creative work they’d enthusiastically commercialize. 30 years ago, while still chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates wrote an influential essay called “Content is King,” that correctly predicted the degree to which the Internet would commoditize creative work (with Gates’ help):

Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.

[…]

When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of ‘content’ becomes very wide.

—Bill Gates, “Content is King,” 1996

The term “content” stuck. Over the last few decades, the business school folks have been so successful at influencing language that “content” has become the catchall sludge term to encompass everything from blog posts to songs to Netflix films. It’s now common to hear authors, comedians, and filmmakers refer to themselves as “content creators.”

Peggy: Sex sells.

Don: Says who?

Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this. They take all this monkey crap and stick it in a briefcase, completely unaware that their success depends on something more than their shoeshine.

[…]

They can’t do what we do. And they hate us for it.

—Mad Men, “For Those Who Think Young”

My years in the content business🔗

In 2018, I quit my job to start my own company. A lot of my business ideas involved writing, so I described them as “content businesses.” It always felt odd to me, but that was how everyone else described businesses like mine, so I just went with it.

A few years later, I went to an indie business conference where most attendees ran single-person companies — the bigshots had a dozen or so employees. Despite this, everyone talked about their work in corp-speak, business school terms. How are you capturing value? How can you expand distribution? How are you increasing lifetime value? That is, what are you doing to extract more money from each customer throughout their lifetime?

The overload of business jargon basically rebooted my brain. Do I sound like these people? Why was I calling my work “content?” When did I start saying “distribution channel?” What does that even mean?

I’m an author and a blogger🔗

My favorite thing about being an indie business owner is that you can do it however you want. After the conference, I started thinking more critically about how I described my work. When I found myself using a corp-speak term, I questioned whether there was another word that felt more natural and communicated the same thing.

When I talked about my personal blog, I just called it a blog. There was never a situation where “content” would have conveyed a richer meaning. My website visitors aren’t “traffic”; they’re readers. They don’t “generate engagement”; they send me comments or questions. When I started writing my book, I never called it an “info product.” It’s a book, and I’m its author.

Does it matter? They’re just words🔗

At first, I wasn’t sure if avoiding business school terms would make a difference. Was I just word policing my own mind?

But I did notice an immediate change, especially with words like “traffic.” Traffic makes me feel like I’m just throwing out flypaper and measuring whatever sticks. When I describe website visitors as “readers,” it reminds me that these are real people who have literally billions of other things they could be reading that day, but they’re choosing to spend some of their limited time with me.

I’m a bit unique in that I write a lot about the behind-the-scenes side of my business, and a lot of my paying customers read those posts. Would they enjoy me referring to them as “traffic?” Or scheming to pump them for more “lifetime value?”

Once, when I was interviewing vendors for my last company, I told the sales rep that a mutual acquaintance had recommended I reach out to her. She said, “Oh, yeah, he always sends me great leads.” I think she meant it as a compliment, but she might as well have said, “Oh, yeah, he’s so good at spotting gullible marks.”

Choose your own terms🔗

I’m not telling anyone what words they can use to describe their own work. If you genuinely see yourself as a content creator, go out and create that content.

My modest suggestion is that you think about whether you chose your terms or if they were chosen for you. Maybe you’ll find that you’re not a content creator but rather a blogger, comedian, or artist.

“More Content” illustration by Piotr Letachowicz. Photo of Michelangelo’s David by Brian Banford