I recently had dinner with a friend and learned about his perspective as an engineer on the current self-media market. I really enjoyed the feeling of sharing different viewpoints and the resulting intellectual stimulation.
Because I have a marketing background, I am better able to accurately grasp the pain points of my audience compared to people from other fields, know what they want to see, and what value I can provide.
However, compared to us, people in other fields (including engineers, analysts, or others outside this field) may not know what I know. In other words, we all have things we know and things we don't know in different fields.
The reason for bringing this up is that everyone has their own profession, and everyone has their own area of expertise.
However, if we're talking about "selling products and services on social media," I'm not sure if everyone has this feeling on social media: it seems that the more influential people are, or the more they post, the more they seem to be doing the same thing after a while.
Undeniably, I myself have followed this path. I used to share a lot of content related to creative mindset and techniques, and eventually I started selling content creation courses, which were quite successful. Therefore, I believe that, given my marketing background and the market observations I've made, my actions demonstrate that this approach is valid.
So I've digressed. What I find quite interesting is that, because I have a relevant background and have worked in companies, I can combine some workplace experience with processes that I've actually verified.
There's a set pattern: first, you have your own expertise, then you amplify it through social media, letting more people know what you're doing.
However, if you're originally an engineer, you might not have experienced marketing processes, since our professions are different. Just like I don't know which security points need to be confirmed or reviewed when writing code, or how Tier 3 security might need to be implemented, etc.
However, I have also observed that some people have a marketing background but share things that are not their own expertise (such as the currently popular Vibe-coding or AI). Because they are already very familiar with the "marketing" path, this has become a great advantage for them.
I want to be a bit conservative here: some people are very good at talking and packaging, but the product itself may not be that great. I think marketing and packaging are two different things. Marketing is about making good things visible, while packaging is more like making an empty thing look full.
In contrast, those who truly understand the technology and basic rules are often overshadowed by those who are good at talking, simply because they don't speak up for themselves.
I know some people are so talented they don't need marketing; they perfect something, and word-of-mouth spreads naturally, so they don't need to manage their social media. But what about those in between? They have the talent, but they don't know how to market themselves or promote themselves on social media. What should they do?
I've been thinking about this too. Those caught in the middle might not need to compete with those who are loudest. Instead of assuming "everyone is your audience," wouldn't it be better to spend more time thinking and accurately identifying where your actual audience is?
