More people are writing on the internet than ever before.
Substack raised a Series B at a $650M valuation. Following in their footsteps, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook created tools to help meet the demand of people wanting to publish their thoughts on the internet through writing.
Why are people writing online more? Because it creates opportunities.
Writing is cited as a top three desired skill among employers. And, writing improves people’s professional online presence, which leads to serendipitous relationships that create opportunity.
But, there’s a problem.
Writing online is hard. It’s lonely. It’s intimidating to get started. And, it’s tough to stay consistent once you start.
So, people don’t write online as much as they want to, and this results in missed opportunities.
This is where Taptive comes in.
Taptive helps writers write by running cohort-based writing programs for online communities and companies. Let’s break that down.
⏰ Cohort-based: Cohort-based learning is simply bringing a group together to achieve a goal over a set time frame. Cohort-based learning is an effective way to learn on the internet, and it has become popular as COVID has made us more comfortable interacting online.
🖊 Writing Programs: We focus on writing because writing helps people to learn (clear writing = clear thinking), and it creates professional opportunities by signaling knowledge and interest through a writing portfolio. In addition, through my experience building MyMBA and The Tech Progressive, I’ve seen the benefits and demand for writing-focused programs. Read more here: The Idea Maze: How MyMBA Helped Build The Tech Progressive.
🌐 Communities and Companies: Online organizations benefit from cohort-based writing programs. Cohort-based programs help strengthen relationships within the organization. Also, writing helps increase opportunities and level-up members of the organization. Finally, public writing from organization members is natural marketing for the community or company.
Program Design
Through many iterations of online learning programs, I’ve learned how to structure a cohort to help people to write. Writing is not easy, and our programs are built to help people publish their writing. In the past, we’ve helped over 70 people publish 250+ online essays.
So, what does the writer’s experience in one of Taptive’s programs look like? We’re constantly iterating and improving the experience, but the basic idea is to eliminate the pain points described above: writing is lonely, intimidating, and tough to stay consistent.
Our cohort-based programs give support to writers so they know they’re not writing alone. As we integrate into existing communities and companies, we connect writers with like-minded people that are writing about similar topics.
We make the writing experience less intimidating by sharing resources to guide the writer through every step. This includes guides on how to start writing online, how to think about publishing content, how to eliminate the fear of posting, and more.
Finally, we help writers stay consistent through strict deadlines, word constraints, and other features like writing partners, awards, breakout cohorts, reminders, and more.
All of this leads to us supporting writers to write.
Thinking Ahead
We run these writing programs for online communities and companies. Taptive has a standard, productized writing program that we run for each organization. We work with each organization to build a program that suits their needs, but the core of the program remains the same.
We’re running programs for several organizations now, and we’re planning to partner with different organizations in the next year to help as many people write as possible.
The Industry
I’ve been writing about the education industry for two years now, and I’m even more excited about it than when I first started. It’s a $212B industry that’s growing at 12% a year. EdTech is following a simple trend - more of our lives are moving to the digital world. Education will be no different.
Taptive is riding this wave by helping people to learn through writing and increase their opportunities in the digital world by building online writing portfolios. We’re partnering with organizations that understand this value.
Open Mind
Taptive is the extension of previous work I’ve done in the education space (MyMBA and The Tech Progressive). From learning and experimenting with different models, I am confident in Taptive’s direction. However, as always, I plan to be open to change and iteration.
Thanks for following the journey!
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That's crazy, I knew it was getting big, but had no idea this is something a lot of companies are looking for - They need it! It's rare to find someone who communicates well in a work setting.
Congratulations and best of luck on your new venture, Grant!