You may have noticed that I’ve been making videos instead of writing as much. What started out as the “Seneca Letters” for cybersecurity has seemingly turned into the Seneca Videos for TryHackme.
What’s the reason for this shift?
Videos are easier to promote and they help build an audience.
But why is an “audience” important to someone that considers themselves a follower of Stoic teachings?
Let’s explore that concept a bit.
Growing an Audience
Creating, growing, and maintaining an audience isn't easy, but using videos to increase engagement can be a great way to hit all three. Videos can be a tool for building a community, demonstrating actions instead of only words on paper.
As someone that lives a Stoic lifestyle, I create content that to me, is worth creating. I don’t go after click-bait stuff (although I did try one experiment with putting cats in my videos to test engagement rates vs non-cat videos. Spoilers: cats in videos are the easy button).
Videos that are informative (and entertaining) are more likely to be shared. And if my goal is to create content that helps people, part of that goal should be to try my best to get that message to as many people as I can. Within moderation, fate willing.
For example: using videos to explain how to solve a problem is a great way to engage viewers, but what problems can I solve for cybersecurity/hacking/red teaming that is worth solving?
It isn’t enough to make a video with the intention of getting clicks, the video has to mean something. The content has to be worth the time I spend to make it, and the time the audience spends watching it.
The term “audience” has multiple meanings as well, as YouTube has a number of ways to help create content for multiple audiences. These include YouTube Shorts and YouTube Reels which allow snippets of longer videos to be shared and which can also be used on other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Who am I to judge if TikTok is bad or good? It’s neither of those things! It’s just a website, remember: Stoic philosophy applies, even to TikTok!
During this experiment of creating video content types, I’ve discovered that yes it’s true more often than not that people have short attention spans. Videos will stop being watched if they aren’t hooking an audience quickly. If the viewer does not feel that the video might be worth their time in the first 15-30 seconds, they are gone. This means I need to make sure the video is quickly informative, AND worth their time.
So I’ve been testing out different video formats over the past few months. I’ve been researching the questions of:
* How can I make a video that is worth being made…
* that can be used on multiple platforms…
* that solve a problem…
* and ultimately help someone?
Each platform has a different audience, so testing out different types of videos to see which performs better has yielded interesting results.
More than that though, at the core of all of this is: what videos are worth making?
Cybersecurity is NICHE!
Interesting research discovery: the length of the video depends on how much time the audience will invest to watch it. I’ve discovered a secret: [SPOILER] Cyber is a niche field! And dipping into specific areas like pentesting or threat hunting makes the videos even more niche.
If the audience has a short attention span, and the content is niche, there is a high chance the video won’t have great engagement. And if engagement rates are already low for content like video games or cats…yikes.
The next time you see a someone trend on LinkedIn with 300+ reactions, check out how many followers or connections they have - I bet you’ll find their engagement rate is lower than expected! I’m not pointing out the the content others make isn’t worth the time to watch it, only that engagement rates are LOW for almost every type of content out there (except cats). Even for established influences.
So there is a Stoic riddle I am solving right now: at what point have I crossed a line into creating content to attract people instead of creating content that needs to be created?
The answer: I struggle with it daily. I could write another full article on the struggles of combatting narcissism as a result of creating and publishing content. I know all the click-bait things I could do to grow an audience, but I feel like doing those things purely for the sake of growing an audience takes me away from my true nature, the whole reason I started making vids: to help others.
So I won’t make a video unless it makes sense to do so: the video needs a roadmap, a purpose, and a specific problem it’s trying to solve.
Why need an audience at all?
At the start of the article I posed the question: why is an “audience” important to someone that considers themselves a follower of Stoic teachings? Gather round for a story.
It all started when I began researching Col. John Boyd, creator of the OODA loop and a modern day Sun Tzu. When researching Col. Boyd, I knew, no I FELT that everything he was talking about could be directly applied to offensive security tactics and strategy: red team, pentesting, threat hunting. Hacker stuff.
For the past few months I have been, in my spare time, using an AI to clean up his (thankfully) recorded BETA videos from the early 80s, cleaning up the audio, and manually transcribing all 6 hours of his presentation. I am doing all this BEFORE creating a single application to hacker stuff. Col Boyd’s work is WORTH preserving first and foremost, before I even consider placing my own applications on top of it.
But it dawned on me though that without an audience, I would be casting my research into the void, something Col Boyd struggled with himself when first trying to find an audience for his research.
So to give the research the best chance at being seen, read, and to share the legacy of John Boyd with as many people as possible, I decided to grow an audience for when the research is ready to be released. I’m not waiting to hit a magic number of subscribers, like blackmail almost. Just preparing what I can, with the time that I have, for when it is finally ready.
As of this writing, I have about ⅓ of the materials ready to go, but still not adapted to the art of hacker stuff.
It’s a long process, but will be worth it in the end, even if I am the only person that ever consumes it.
But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try my best to build an audience for when it’s time to release. If my true goal is to share Col Boyd’s legacy, his teachings, preserve it for the future and then use those teachings to make the lives of red teamers, threat hunters, and pentesters better - then I need to try my best to give the content to be seen, understood, and shared.
But even if none of the above happened, it was still worth my own time to attempt the process.
Farewell.
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