In the past few months, I’ve written multiple pieces of content that went viral and were read by hundreds of thousands of people.

When I recently thought about it, I realized that all of my most popular pieces of content have one thing in common: I was scared to publish them.

There is almost a perfect correlation between my level of fear before a post goes live and how much it resonates with readers.

Usually, when I’m afraid to publish something, it’s because I’m revealing something typically kept secret.

This could either be an opinion like “Build a business, not an audience”, a self-reflecting confession like “I need to stop sabotaging myself” or something tactical like “The simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people”.

Readers really appreciate it when you say what thousands of people themselves secretly agree with but never had the courage to say.

Readers love getting a peek into a world normally hidden. The world can either be external like in an inside-view of what’s going on in a company, subculture, or team. A very simple example would be companies or creators sharing revenue numbers publicly. But it can also be internal worlds like when you’re sharing your thoughts, fears, and doubts.

And readers definitely value when you teach everything you know and don’t hold back anything.

This is now the guiding compass I use to pick topics to write about.

I will even go as far as saying that if you’re not going to share any secrets, don’t bother creating content in the first place.

The internet is already full of pointless content that was only published since everyone is talking about the importance of churning out content. I’m pretty sure you have better stuff to do than creating content no one cares about.