Who do you work for?

A few years back when I was pursuing corporate goals, I was told that I need to post on LinkedIn regularly twice a week for it to work. Only then will there be recognition of my knowledge and expertise as a consultant, they said. I need to blog or write or post something or keep commenting to seal it. It doesn’t matter what I post, as long as there is a base volume.

When I turned author, they said the same thing about Amazon and Instagram. You should post your book covers on Instagram and make sure that the reviewers comment or like or repost them. They said as an author, I should make sure I churn out work and have enough reviews for others to notice my books.

Then I was told I should have a website. The SEO consultant said I should post articles there that should have keywords so that it is indexed in search engines. And that I should have a regular monthly budget so that there will be links or something to my website.

I tried all of the above at different phases of life. None of it worked – for me at least. Or maybe I didn’t do it long enough. Or maybe I didn’t spend enough. I never tried to figure out why it didn’t work.

The only thing that I persisted with was blogging and my website, not due to any SEO keywords, but simply because I liked it.

Somewhere down the line of this brief journey, I started wondering who was I working for?

When I was in corporate, I felt like I was working to build a reputation – and for no reason. Clients never came looking at my LinkedIn, nor did jobs come based on LinkedIn after a point. Whenever they came, it was when they had a specific need that I met perfectly. And then, after they spoke to me, some of them went and checked my LinkedIn. Nothing more, nothing less.

And as an author, I never found a single reader who chanced upon my website while searching for something to read. Or a reader who went to Amazon looking for something to read, and because I turned up in some search, went ahead and bought my books. Most of my readers went to Amazon or my website after someone had told them about my writing or books or they had read something I had written somewhere that triggered their interest.

I wondered that if everyone is trying to establish their reputation with LinkedIn posts, and everyone is on Instagram or Amazon or with SEO establishing some keywords to get searched on, who is everyone working for?

Is everyone working for the algorithm? If that is the case, won’t the algorithm stop working? I never got an answer.

But either because it didn’t interest me or because it didn’t work on me, I decided not to work for the algorithms. I decided it is best to work for yourself, and not chase any reputation or readership directly. Let it come if it does, and if it doesn’t, I might as well enjoy working for myself and get better at the craft.

I experienced a new enthusiasm and commitment dawn within myself when I decided to work for myself. That is the biggest upside of not working for the algorithms. And somehow, a small bunch of readers found my writing interesting. So, now I work for myself and those readers. It is far better than working for the algorithms. I now have the answer to the question: Who do you work for?

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