Content as catalyst
Why your content is more than simply creating a noise or building your presence ...
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 243
Perhaps we all need to stop.
Or, at the very least, perhaps we need to slow down and take a look at what we’re doing
With the ease and availability of social media and blogs and AI through which to create and distribute content, we’ve come to a point where we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the potential we’re holding.
Increasingly, content gets treated as if it’s some sort of social megaphone; an electronic billboard that’s constantly changing, almost as if our content has become a tool for broadcasting, for announcing our presence, for saying, “Here I am, and here is what I do.”
The world of politics is particularly good at doing this.
Now, as an exercise, this isn’t wrong per se. It’s just tragically small. It’s like using a nuclear reactor to power a doorbell. It’s overkill.
You are not flashing material on a billboard, you are not holding a megaphone.
You are holding a catalyst.
A catalyst is the spark in your mind that transforms a familiar thought into a life-changing, revolutionary one, without itself being consumed in the process.
In a chemical reaction, a catalyst provides an alternative pathway for chemicals to interact while requiring less energy and while remaining unaltered by the interaction.
A catalyst doesn’t participate in the final product; it merely creates the conditions for transformation to occur faster and more efficiently.
Catalysts lower the barrier to change.
And at its core, this is the truest, most powerful purpose of the content you create. Your blog posts, your video, your newsletter—it is not the product. It is the element you introduce into your audience’s ecosystem to spark a reaction.
Your goal is not to be seen.
Your goal is not to be overly visible or to stand out for the sake of standing out.
Your goal is to be the thing that makes your audience see everything else differently.
Think of the best content you’ve ever consumed. A book or an article you’ve read that fundamentally changed your point of view or a documentary or a movie you’ve watched that turned your world inside out and upside down.
That piece of content didn’t just inform you; it rearranged your thinking process.
It connected two or more previously unrelated ideas in your mind.
It challenged a long-held and dearly loved assumption that proved to be wrong.
It mixed one idea with another to give you a new lens through which to view an old belief or through which to tackle an established and previously unsolvable problem.
It took the combination of a muddy footprint and a carpenter’s vise and it gave you the printing press.
That content was a catalyst.
It sparked a reaction within you—a reaction through which you and your world were changed forever, and all while the content itself remained, ready to spark the same reaction in the next person. And the next person. And the next person.
This fundamental change in understanding shifts everything we believe, accept, trust, and know about the process of how we create things.
Stop creating conclusions. Start creating collisions.
A conclusion is a dangerous, thought-limiting, progress-killing thing to jump to or to arrive at. Conclusions are sealed boxes and closed loops. They afford us nothing to graduate to in terms of possibilities.
Conclusions say, “This is the way things are; this is all I can think of and everything I can accept and process. My assertion on this point is absolute. My mind is made up and won’t be changed by any new evidence. The end.”
Religious fundamentalists and people who believe the Earth is flat fall into this category. And yet, every major breakthrough in human development, from the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel through to movable type, the computer chip, satellites, and the discovery of DNA counters this mindset.
Conclusions ask only for agreement or disagreement. If you support the former, you’re on the right side. If you support the latter, you’re an object of derision or worse, a threat to society and to the world of accepted norms.
Meanwhile, a collision is an open source. It says, “Here are two ideas. I am smashing them together. Look at the sparks!” Collisions invite synthesis, new ways of thinking and doing, personal application, and world-changing potential.
Your job in terms of creating content is not to be the final authority. Your job is to be the best possible catalyst.
So, how do you build a catalyst?
First, you focus on friction, not just flow. Smooth, vanilla, agreeable content that doesn’t challenge people’s thinking is easily consumed and just as easily forgotten. But the content that catalyzes change creates a healthy, productive friction that rubs against the grain of conventional thinking by challenging accepted wisdom. Don’t be afraid to poke the hornet’s nest, don’t shy away from creating a little cognitive dissonance. The friction is where the heat—and the light—is generated.
Next, you provide the spark, not the bonfire. You don’t need to exhaustively cover every angle of a topic. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Your role is to provide the initial spark: the compelling question, the provocative frame, the unexpected data point, and to then step back, trusting your audience’s intelligence to help the flame catch. The most powerful content often feels incomplete, because it demands the reader’s own thoughts to finish it.
Third, you curate the reaction. If content is a catalyst, then the comments section, the DMs, the emails are the beaker where the reaction is happening. Your work isn’t done when you hit “publish”; it’s just entered a new phase. Engage with people. Ask what they are aware of that they might have previously missed. See what new compounds they’re forming from the elements you’ve provided. This is where you see the catalysis in action.
Finally, you push the value transformation over traffic. When you adopt the mindset of being a catalyst, everything about the way you create and share content shifts. You start to care less about vanity numbers and more about transformation stories. A single comment that says, “This changed how I approach my work” is worth more than a hundred likes.
Your ROI isn’t necessarily in the number of likes, shares, or comments it attracts; it lies more in whether your content caused a reaction, changed someone’s mind, inspired an action, or solved a problem.
That is your true ROI.
So, stop building billboards. Stop shouting through megaphones and know this:
As a content creator you are an alchemist of ideas.
Your content is a tinderbox and a lode stone; your content is the catalytic agent that turns the base metal of information into the gold of human insight and massive action.
The world doesn’t need more flash, pizzazz, or noise. Politics, sports, and show business generate quite enough of those things to last us all a lifetime, thank you very much.
No.
The world needs more catalysts.
Go out into the world and become one.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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P.S. If you found this useful, share it with another creator who needs an ego check (in a nice way). Want more unfiltered takes on content creation? Join my newsletter. No fluff, just the stuff that works.
Next time on Shaking the Tree: Inspiration from the BBC’s Shetland
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.
Thanks Gary, really helpful 🫡👏👍