When Great Aesthetics Can Only Do So Much

Maybe you know the feeling. You sit down to create something, and almost immediately your mind starts imagining how it’s going to look — the aesthetic, the format, the energy. Before you've even figured out what you even want to say.

So many of us are visual thinkers. Visuals are how we process the world, how we get inspired, how we express ourselves. Of course, that's where our minds go first.

But if you want your content to have more depth and reach more people, flip the order. Message first. Form second.

Why Message Must Come Before Form

Let's say you sit down and decide, I'm going to make a quick caption post today. You've already made a constraint before you've even found out what you have to say. And maybe what's trying to come through is something rich and layered — something that actually deserves a long-form carousel, or a full essay, or a Substack piece. By starting with the container, you may have already cut off the most interesting parts of the message before they had a chance to surface.

But when you start with the message, when you let yourself fully explore what you want to say, without worrying about format, you end up in a much better position to ask: what form does this actually need? Sometimes it's simple. Sometimes it's complex. But you're making that choice with intention, based on what the content actually requires, rather than what was easiest or most familiar. Form is in service of the message. Not the other way around.

How to Figure Out What Needs to Be Said

I've talked in a previous post about how to decide what to say and what to post, and it really comes down to one core question: what do you want your content to do for you?

For most of us, the answer is some combination of two things.

The first is strategic.

If you're trying to guide people toward something specific — a membership, an offer, a program, a service — then some of your content needs to be actively doing that work. This doesn’t have to be pushy or salesy by any means. But more so in a way that points people in the direction you want them to go. If you're not talking about the thing you want people to take action on, you can't expect them to.

The second is creative and personal.

A lot of us got into content creation because we have something to say — because we think and feel deeply and want a place to share those things. And that impulse is just as valid as the strategic one. Some of my best-performing posts have been the ones that started as something I simply needed to get out. A realization I was sitting with. Something I'd been turning over in my mind for weeks. An experience that cracked something open.

So when you're trying to figure out what your message is, ask yourself both: What does my content need to do right now? And: What's alive in me right now that wants to be said? What have you been thinking about, wrestling with, noticing? What's the thing you keep almost saying but haven't quite said yet?

Both your strategic priorities and your creative impulses are valid inputs. The most powerful content tends to live where they intersect — where what you need to say and what your audience needs to hear are actually the same thing.

How to Mine Your Own Life for Your Best Content

This is something I do with clients all the time. When we meet for content strategy sessions, we often spend a significant portion of our time just... talking. About what's coming up for them. What they've noticed lately in their client sessions, in their work, in their personal lives. What's been on their mind. What's felt meaningful, or confusing, or energizing.

We use that time to sift through their thoughts, feelings, and experiences — and then we pull out the threads that want to become content.

You don't need a brand strategist to do this. You can do it with a friend. You can do it by yourself, in your journal. You can do it with AI. The practice is the same: give yourself unstructured space to surface what's alive in you, and then decide how to share it.

This is what people mean when they talk about content that feels authentic. It’s content that comes from a real place, from something you've actually thought and felt and lived. This will always land differently than content that was engineered backward from a format. People feel the difference, even if they can't name it.

Letting Message Shape Form: A Practical Framework

Once you've identified what you want to say, here's how to think about form:

Simple, singular insight? A well-crafted caption, a short video with overlay text, a standalone tweet. Keep it clean and let the clarity do the work.

Something layered or nuanced? A carousel, a long-form Substack post, a podcast episode. Give it the space it needs to breathe.

Something experiential or emotional? Video — where your voice, your face, your energy are part of the message. Some things lose something when they're translated to text.

Something evergreen and searchable? A blog post like this one. Something people can find again, share, return to.

If this is something you want support with — actually doing the work of finding your message, showing up consistently, and building a brand that you feel confident in — that's exactly what my membership community, PBA, is for.

Inside, we work through all of it together: what to say, how to say it, and how to share it in a way that grows your audience and feels aligned. No second-guessing, no posting into the void. Just real support, real feedback, and a community of people who get it.

If that sounds like what you've been looking for, I'd love to have you. [Join with a free trial.]