Hypothesis: basically anyone can attract a cult following online, provided that they
1) are a decent writer or speaker 2) are writing/speaking about something which may or may not be particularly original, but does provide at least some value to people who haven’t heard of this kind of stuff before 3) devote a substantial part of their message into confidently talking about how their version of things is the true and correct one, and how everyone who says otherwise is deluded/lying/clueless
There’s a lot of demand for the experience of feeling like you know something unique that sets you apart from all the mundane, unwashed masses.
(This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as the content that’s being peddled is something reasonable, then these people’s followers may get a lot of genuine value from being so enthusiastic about it. Being really enthusiastic almost by definition means that you are going to invest a lot more into internalizing and using the thing, than does someone who goes “meh, that’s old hat” and then never actually does anything with the thing. A lot depends on how sensible the content is—this method probably works equally well with content that’s a net harm to buy into, as it does with content that’s a net good. But of course, the fact that it works basically regardless of what the content is, means that a lot of the content in question will be bad.)
I’d really like to read more about what you think of this. Another closely related feature they need is:
Content well formatted (The Sequences are a great example of this,The Codex). Of course, blogs are also a good basic idea which allows incremental reading.
Length of the posts? Maybe? I think there may be a case to be made for length helping to generate that cult following since it’s directly related to the amount of time invested by people reading. There are many examples where posts could be summarized by a few paragraphs but instead they go long! (But of course there’s a reason they do so).
Hypothesis: basically anyone can attract a cult following online, provided that they
1) are a decent writer or speaker
2) are writing/speaking about something which may or may not be particularly original, but does provide at least some value to people who haven’t heard of this kind of stuff before
3) devote a substantial part of their message into confidently talking about how their version of things is the true and correct one, and how everyone who says otherwise is deluded/lying/clueless
There’s a lot of demand for the experience of feeling like you know something unique that sets you apart from all the mundane, unwashed masses.
(This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as the content that’s being peddled is something reasonable, then these people’s followers may get a lot of genuine value from being so enthusiastic about it. Being really enthusiastic almost by definition means that you are going to invest a lot more into internalizing and using the thing, than does someone who goes “meh, that’s old hat” and then never actually does anything with the thing. A lot depends on how sensible the content is—this method probably works equally well with content that’s a net harm to buy into, as it does with content that’s a net good. But of course, the fact that it works basically regardless of what the content is, means that a lot of the content in question will be bad.)
Other common marketing advice that fits into this:
Set up a “bad guy” that you’re against
If you’re in a crowded category, either
Create a new category (e.g. rationality)
Set yourself up as an alternative to number in a category (Pepsi)
Become number one in the category (Jetblue?)
It’s better to provide value that takes away a pain (painkillers) than that adds something that was missing (vitamins)
I’d really like to read more about what you think of this. Another closely related feature they need is:
Content well formatted (The Sequences are a great example of this,The Codex). Of course, blogs are also a good basic idea which allows incremental reading.
Length of the posts? Maybe? I think there may be a case to be made for length helping to generate that cult following since it’s directly related to the amount of time invested by people reading. There are many examples where posts could be summarized by a few paragraphs but instead they go long! (But of course there’s a reason they do so).