Why Bill Gates Creates Content?
By: Can Balkaya
Tags: Covid 19, Bill Gates, Writing, Content Creation, Pandemic

Why Bill Gates Creates Content?

You are the third richest person in the world and you write blog articles and film YouTube videos. Why is that?

Bill Gates is now the third richest and maybe one of the busiest person in the world. Usually we see that the people who run ultra-rich and big organizations aren’t dealing with making videos or blogging, but Bill is different: He has been producing content both on his own website and in various platforms such as YouTube.

It was interesting to me at first for someone like Bill Gates to deal with this kind of work. After all, consider the financial value of Bill Gates’ time spent producing content! But when I thought a little more, I started to think the situation was very different.

The change of my mind started with Bill Gates’ little essay “Content is The King”. Bill wrote this essay in 1996: When the big digital publishing companies weren’t fully formed and personal creators weren’t fully exist. This article reveals Bill’s vision and reasons of his current content production.

Let me tell you from the start. Bill’s content production is not based on such a large purpose. Bill told the New York Times the reason why he started publishing the contents of the book recommendations:

A few years ago I started thinking it would be fun to share some of these notes with the public, I have always loved reading and learning, so it is great if people see a book review and feel encouraged to read and share what they think online or with their friends. Bill Gates

Bill Gates’ reasons for publishing content are actually quite similar to the reasons we produce content. (Some of us also do content production to earn money, of course.)

For the remainder of the article, I’ll cover Bill’s reasons for producing content. You will see that these reasons are actually everybody’s reason. I hope that Bill’s reasons become your reasons.

Just For Writing

Yes, just for writing. Writing can be relaxing and fun. For example, some of Bill’s posts tell about funny events from his life such as Warren Buffet doing pushups on his 50th birthday.

Also, everyone needs writing: Writing is a great tool both for fun and for improving our storytelling. After all, all you need to do to be a better narrator is storytelling, right?

Improving Communicate With People

Especially with COVID-19, many people started to come up with absurd conspiracy theories like “Bill Gates helped the spread of the coronavirus”. This is not a good perception for Bill.

His contents can help change the way people view him. (Although I don’t personally think that such people’s views on any subject might change, maybe it is.)

At the same time, due to the large number of people reading and watching Bill Gates’ content, anything he proposes can grow very quickly. For example: Khan Academy. You probably know Khan Academy, but let me explain it briefly for those of you who don’t: “Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan, with the goal of creating a set of online tools that help educate students.”

Khan Academy made its first big leap forward in 2010 when Bill Gates said he was using Khan Academy for his children’s education and now Khan Academy is one of the largest online education organizations in the world! This is a very huge power, right?

To Inspire People

People like Bill take part in many projects to set an example for other people: interviews, documentaries, donations, etc.

Creating content is indeed a great tool to set an example for, inspire other people. As a matter of fact, Bill shares a lot of content on his blog and YouTube channel explaining what they are doing at his own organization, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Frankly, I can say that Bill’s content like this is inspiring for me as well.

Branding

Just as every company needs a very good branding, we humans also need a good brading. If we can imagine that a company with Bill’s personal net wealth can enter Fortune 500 companies, the “Bill Gates” brand can be regarded as a huge company. That’s why, Bill Gates needs a very good branding.

His contents are very important for his branding. Consider Bill Gates’ current book recommendations: Bill is one of the best known book reviewers in the world right now. I can truly say that his blog posts have changed the book publishing world. You can read this article about this topic.

Maybe you know Bill Gates started a new Podcast with famous actor Rashida Jones. The podcast is called “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions”. While I was writing this article, they only published 5 episodes. This is really new podcast. Actually, I like it. I recommend the podcast to all. The most interesting thing about this podcast for me is that it belongs to “Gates Production”. Maybe, in the future, GatesNotes might actually turn to a publishing organization. Of course, none of us can know this for sure.