For marketing yourself, and by extension your business – what you do is less important than what you represent.

What you do is functional. It’s the nuts and bolts, it’s the thing that someone would get if they worked with you. When you market yourself by what you do (“I’m a lawyer,” “I’m a SaaS founder”) it might tell people a little about when to think about you.

But it doesn’t get them interested.

What you represent, on the other hand, is very different. When you change marketing from being about you (“I do this”) to an outcome that people care about, it does a few things:

• It makes your marketing broader: you capture the attention of people who want that result but aren’t sure how to get it. Sure, an estate planning attorney does the paperwork, but what he represents is peace of mind that his clients’ families will be cared for.
• It gives you more interesting and more varied ways to communicate: the SaaS founder’s clients don’t care how the thing works, they have a problem and the software represents a way to make that pain go away.

The content you produce isn’t really you. It’s how others get to know you. You’re building a character in their minds. James Bond is a character that occupies a place in minds, and represents something. So does Indiana Jones.

As will you, with what you post.

But if what you write is self-centered or boring (about what you do), they’ll just keep scrolling.

If it’s about one circle bigger – ideas and what those ideas mean to the reader, now people are more interested.

So: what do you represent?