I used to call myself a content designer.
It felt right at the time. I wasn’t just writing captions or scheduling posts — I was thinking about how a brand communicates its philosophy through every piece of content it publishes.
Then a post went viral. Two clients came in through the DMs.
And everything went sideways.
What clients saw: a post with massive reach. Proof that content works.
What they wanted: the same result. Packaged. Repeatable. Guaranteed.
What I was actually selling: something completely different.
The first thing I noticed working with brands on content strategy was this:
They didn’t want a library. They wanted a funnel.
Put content in. Get leads out. Measure ROI. Repeat.
And I understood the logic. I just couldn’t agree with it.
Because a funnel empties. A library compounds.
A funnel is built to move people through and out. A library is built to hold something worth returning to.
When you build content as a funnel — every post is a transaction. Every caption is a pitch. Every story is bait.
When you build content as a library — every post is a brick. Every briefing is a room. Every story is a window into how you think.
One day — when the right visitor lands on your page — they don’t scroll through a feed. They walk through a building. And they know immediately whether this is their kind of place.
The corrupted idea that broke everything
The agencies didn’t help.
They sold virality as a service. They promised engagement rates and follower counts and reach figures that had nothing to do with whether the brand was actually building something real.
And clients believed them — because the numbers were tangible. Because ROI fits in a spreadsheet. Because a library is harder to measure than a funnel.
So content became trends. Discount posters. Dumb challenges copied from platforms the brand didn’t understand.
The colour grid got curated. The captions got templated. The philosophy got replaced by the algorithm.
And somewhere in all of that — the brand lost its voice. Not because content failed. Because content was never given the chance to do what it actually does.
Why I stopped offering the service
Not because I was wrong about what content should be.
Because I was too tired of explaining it to people who had already decided what they wanted.
You cannot sell a library to someone who only wants a vending machine.
So I stopped trying.
What I built instead
Majalah BIKIN.
Not as a portfolio. Not as a lead generation tool. Not as proof that I can go viral.
As an artifact.
A demonstration — built in public, one briefing at a time — of what content actually is when it’s done with intention.
When you land on majalahbikin.com today, you don’t see a grid of promotions. You don’t see trend-chasing. You don’t see discount posters.
You see a worldview. A way of thinking about human experience, design, business, and psychology — accumulated over 30 years and published one brick at a time.
That’s a library.
And libraries outlast every funnel ever built.
For the brand owners reading this
I’m not saying ROI doesn’t matter. I’m not saying leads don’t matter.
I’m saying — content is not the right tool for either of those jobs in the short term.
Content is the right tool for one job:
Making sure that when the right person finally finds you — they already know exactly who you are.
That’s not a funnel metric. That’s a brand asset.
And brand assets — real ones — don’t expire when you stop paying to boost them.
P.S. At Majalah BIKIN, I write about human experience, UX, and business psychology — drawn from 30 years across airlines, banking, design, and the field. Read more and follow along.