Ethical Writing Tips. Why You Should Publish Less Than You Could.

I’m going to say something fairly weird for someone who’s built a career out of writing, marketing, storytelling, teaching, and coaching people to write better.

Something very, very odd to say, for someone who’s the co-founder of an AI storytelling tool, StoryLab.ai, and who’s fully invested in helping that platform become the biggest and best it could possibly be.

I’m going to say this:

Dear fellow writers, marketers, content creators, bloggers — even though I whole-heartedly believe we should write as much as we possibly could —

I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be posting, publishing and sharing every story we could publish.

Here’s why.

The world and our mental health need less and better content

The digital landscape— and hence, by proxy, the human experience — has become a continuous landslide of content, ideas, products, services, funny videos, and ditto memes.

The world is going haywire in terms of mental health, and our digital lifestyles seem to be a pretty obvious contributor to that.

Respect your audience’s attention, and only share what you absolutely know for sure is going to make their life better.

If you’re one of the rare specimens of humans or brands who come up with something that is going to rock your readers’, potential customers’, or audience’s world every day — by all means be my guest. Post away.

But if you’re not, and you’re more like most of us who maybe come up with a brilliant, very useful piece once or twice, maybe thrice a week: think about what you really need to share, and leave the rest out.

Take a day off, and refrain from adding to the landslide of content for 24 or even 48 hours. Your audience’s mental health and subconscious spam-filters will thank you for it.

Filter your content like The Buddha, Krishna, and Socrates would

“If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?”

This exact quote or a variant of the same, sometimes with an added “Is it to be spoken by you?” and “Is it to be spoken now?” — has been attributed to American radioman Bernard Seltzer and Greek philosopher Socrates, but can be traced with sources to the teachings of The Buddha and the writings in the Bhagavad Gita.

One small remark about the “kind” aspect: I don’t think your stories, copy, blogs or articles always have to be kind per se. If you go into the sources you’ll see that “kindness” is a kind of shorthand for saying “in beneficial spirit”.

In other words: “Is what you’re about to say meant to not cause unnecessary harm, and instead to genuinely bring positive change into the world?”

I would advise all of us, myself included, to let our content pass through these “three filters of speech” every time we think about clicking on that “publish now” button.

To sum up: write more, publish what you need to

I think we can all do with writing as much as we can.

It’ll help us organize our thoughts and feelings better, and live a happier life with a calmer mind. It will help us understand ourselves better and even make it possible for us to understand our own purpose in this world; what truly matters to us.

Writing more can certainly help us live our purpose, by way of helping us communicate better and connect to the right people — so we can help each other grow.

But.

Regardless if you’re going to use an AI marketing copy generator to write more stories, faster. Regardless of the idea that ‘The internet and specifically social media can be a great sounding board for your ideas’ – which I believe has some merit.

And regardless if you’re going to start re-thinking the concept of posting every day “because the algorithm and competition demand it” —

I truly hope you’ll let your words pass through The Three Filters, before you send them into the world.

StoryLab.ai is an online tool ​

That generates content ideas for you, and then helps you along the writing process by generating hooks and outlines for your stories. We also offer ready-made copy for your marketing purposes.​

To reach your growth goals, you need better copy. ​
More stories. Faster.​

We can help you get there. ​
And we’ll help you become a better storyteller along the way.

Come check it out for yourself at StoryLab.ai.

Author bio:

Erwin Lima: What inspires Erwin is helping people, teams and brands to become the best version of themselves. Guiding them with curiosity, empathy, and Growth Storytelling.

Over the past 10+ years as a copywriter, author, consultant, and coach, he’s helped dozens of Brands, Teams, and individual human beings to grow their sense of motivation and focus, but also their reach, engagement, and revenue— through the power of their own story. You can find Erwin on LinkedIn and on his website.