Passion in Content Creating: Why It Is Simply the Most Important Thing

Having a passion for what you do is simply the most important thing to me in content creation or in many other areas of life. I see many people nowadays, who create content about a topic just because they think it’s cool or popular. You see a fitness blogger, an Instagram influencer on cake baking, or a TikTok video on how to have a different hairstyle than everyone else. Now you want to start creating content on those topics of course because it just seems to be awesome. Please hold on a minute! Ask yourself first if you really care about the topic yourself!

Passion as a Success Factor

Without passion for the topic, I say you can do an okay job, or maybe a good job if you put a lot of effort into it. In the end, I’m pretty certain you will not succeed or achieve what you have hoped for. Passion for what you’re doing just gives you an extra edge, where it gets hard to compete with you. I felt this personally when I did surf lessons. Let’s compare my 2 surf instructors. As a little background, I believe a surf instructor basically needs a passion for 2 things: Surfing and teaching people. Maybe other things too but I don’t care about them in my example.

So Instructor 1: Joao

When I did my exchange semester in Lisbon (which I can recommend), I also did a surf lesson. It’s ages ago so I might need to invent some facts. We started with Yoga on the beach as a warm-up, which was cool. Then Joao, our surf instructor, entered the stage. Joao is not his real name, of course, I just met so many Joaos in Portugal I think it could fit. He started showing us some things and then we quickly got to try our first waves. It was clearly visible he was a Pro himself and quite passionate about surfing. I had a lot of fun but I was mostly falling. Well only falling or missing the wave. The best advice I got from Joao was ‘Man, why did you stop paddling?’. Which was helpful but in the end, I didn’t really have the feeling he cared if I was ever able to surf. So he had a passion for surfing but a lack of passion for teaching.

Let’s get to Instructor 2: Julien

During my holidays in Tahiti, of course, I had to take the famous waves there. So I booked surf lessons again with Julien. The moment we met him, we felt his positive energy and passion for surfing as well as teaching surfing. He explained every aspect and very quickly we were all able to stand on the board. Every wave you tried to catch, Julien was watching and giving either good advice or cheers when you made it. Either way, I felt super encouraged to get the next wave and the next one and you guessed it: The next one. So needless to say I totally recommend him. In addition, even though I’m not attracted to men I want to say he is stunningly handsome. So fly to Tahiti and do surf lessons.

So what was our point again? Ah yes, passion is making the difference between a good job, and an outstanding one. I think it is one of the criteria that makes you stand out from the masses, particularly the masses who are creating content out there. Same as for our surf instructors, you simply feel it when a content creator is passionate about the topic.

Passion Eliminates Work

This is probably my main point in having a passion for what you do. Creating content will become natural for you and just will not feel like work anymore. Don’t get me wrong, creating high-quality, content will still require a lot of your time and effort and you might end up spending 60, 70 or more hours a week on it. What I’m saying is, that is just a part of your life that you enjoy. The best indicator is, when you see a lot of things to do for yourself but you wake up in the morning with a lot of excitement and energy to tackle them. At the moment I am writing this article, I’m working 50-60 hours at my current job (that I’m also passionate about) and still feel a lot of joy sitting here creating this piece of content.

Do You Have Passion for Every Aspect of Content Creation? - The Passion Scale

Of course, naturally, you’re not passionate about every aspect of creating content. Some people prefer to write, some people prefer to create and edit images, some people prefer to do videos or audio, and some just love to be out there experiencing what later will be the basis for great content. My proposal is to make a self-assessment based on my passion scale. First, you break down what you do in pieces. Let’s take my job as a lead of the SEO and content team for a marketplace for outdoor activities. I broke it down into the following passion areas:

• Topic: Outdoor activities in travel destinations
• Lead and inspire people and help them develop
• Develop new ideas for content to be better than anyone else + set the general structure for creating content at the company
• Administrative stuff

As usual, I did not make it super sophisticated, as it should be fun and easy to use. Of course, there is more to my job but that didn’t seem relevant to my passion scale. E.g. We have quite a cool office but in the end, it’s something nice and rather a hygiene factor for me. For someone else could be part of their passion. I can see that a travel blogger being able to work from everywhere in the world can for sure be part of their passion scale. What I’m saying is, put on your passion scale what really influences your excitement in a positive or negative way.

Now it’s time to give a passion score to the passion areas. I propose percentages like those:

• 80-100% - You are really passionate about this passion area
• 60-80% - You like doing it but it’s not necessarily the thing that got you into it
• 40-60% - You are kind of okay with it
• 0-40% - That part actually annoys you

So then I’d give the following passion scores to my passion areas:

• Topic: Outdoor activities in travel destinations → 100% → Outdoor activities are just awesome and I like helping people find activities
• Lead and inspire people and help them develop → 90% → I want to achieve great things and together with great people it’s much easier + it is a joy seeing people getting better and better in what they are doing.
  • Note: Leading people means also talking in front of them, which was something that scared me in the past (definite 0% on my passion score). It’s an area I could improve quickly and now it has become a part of my job I enjoy :)
• Develop new ideas for content to be better than anyone else + set the general structure for creating content at the company → 100% → I just love digging into that
• Negotiating and pushing topics in the management team → 70% → I love to give the company vision and direction, negotiating it in the management round is sometimes exhausting (even though it works fast in our company). I prefer to just set things into motion
• Administrative stuff → 50% → Surely not my favorite area and not something I’m really excited about (makes me also too much of a boss which I don’t like)

After making this assessment, I love to think of ways to focus more on the things I’m passionate about and try to remove the rest, starting with the low scores. For example, in the past, I was taking care of the KYC process (collecting documents from our partners to get them authenticated for payment from our bank). This was interesting in the beginning but then started to be annoying because it was too much about stupid rules. So I gave it a 10% score at some point and more importantly, was able to shift the process to another team successfully. On the other hand, I got excited about creating blog articles which I successfully got into my sphere = more things I am passionate about. Of course, this will not always work, for instance, the administrative stuff is sticking with me. I can reduce it to a minimum though and at least try to get it in a way that I enjoy it more to do.

Content Creation Should be Part of Your Passion

We can use the passion scale also for content creation in itself. So let’s divide content creation into areas:

• Topic
• Research and collecting information
• Taking pictures
• Making videos
• Editing pictures and videos
• Write texts

First things first, if your score for the topic is not close to 100%, then challenge yourself if you really want to create content about it. If you write about snails, you should love snails. I’d not do content because of any other driver than passion (which is probably obvious at this point of the article). So after clarifying this, let’s assume you have a score like this:

• Topic: 110%
• Research and collecting information: 80%
• Taking pictures: 90%
• Making videos: 50%
• Editing pictures and videos: 100%
• Write texts: 70%

I’d say you bring a good passion level for content creation. Only making videos doesn’t seem to be the thing you like to do. Generally, there are several ways you can approach this:

1. You don’t make videos and focus on writing, pictures, …
2. You partner or team up with someone. If you make a good choice and your passion and skills are complementary, this might be a huge quality boost for your content!
3. You still try it and go for making videos. After gaining experience, there is a good chance you enjoy doing it at some point.

In the end, you know yourself best. So do what feels right!

Passion in Content Creation: Some Final Words

I made my case for passion in content creation. You may want to believe me or not, but I think at some point you will think back about this article and I’m very sure you agree with me. Particularly when you followed a trend that you were not 100% excited about. It may seem appealing and look like a quick way to succeed to jump on the next content opportunity. In the long run, it will become hard work though and you will lose out to people who are really passionate about it. So make an assessment of your passion to make sure you deliver excitement and people will follow you. Now let’s not ramble on any longer and just sum it up: Don’t follow a trend, follow your passion!