The Single Most Common Content Mistake (and Why Everyone Makes It)

The most common content mistake is writing with an imagined mass audience in mind - a vague, generic "people who might be interested in this." Writing for that audience produces content that is hedged, broad, and forgettable, because nothing about it can feel specifically addressed to anyone.

Every piece of content that has ever made someone feel genuinely seen was written by someone with a specific person in mind: this situation, this problem, this stage of the journey, these exact words they'd use to describe it.

Writing for a specific person feels risky because you're explicitly excluding everyone else. If you write for someone who has been trying to get traction as a creator for eight months and is starting to doubt the whole thing, you're not writing for someone who's brand new or someone who's already making a living at it. That specificity feels like giving up reach.

In practice, it's the opposite. The more specifically you write for one person, the more people in that situation feel that you wrote it for them. Vague resonates with nobody; specific resonates with everyone who fits.