SD #07: This One Thing is Your Superpower When It Comes to Successful Content Creation

The Superpower for Content Creation Success that Only the Pros Know About

Read Time:  6.0 minutes 

Date: August 08, 2022 

The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.

— Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live Creator and Producer

Churning out content every day is hard work, even if your primary business is content creation or content marketing.

But if you could choose between being a talented content writer/creator or a consistent one, which one would it be?

What’s the Tip? 

Consistency > Talent

Consistency more than anything else will drive your success in creating content that will help grow your brand and your business.

Consistency in content creation helps you do the following things:

• Create trust with your audience. 
• Rely less on inspiration and more on getting the job done.
• Embrace good enough and keep perfectionism away.
• Build the resilience you need to play the long game.
  
  

How Do You Use It?

What's great about consistency is it applies to any medium you use for distribution. Consistency has one metric - and that is: Did you do it?

When it comes to medium choice, the key is to identify the medium you enjoy using the most. As with anything, if you enjoy it and are comfortable with it, you're more likely to be consistent.

If you like writing shorter pieces of insight or advice, try Twitter.

For longer pieces, try LinkedIn or Medium.

For video, cultivate YouTube.

Pursue the medium where you'll be most motivated to show up.

Next, find the best automation tool to make showing up easier. You can certainly post things manually but over time, it'll be harder to scale.

Find a tool that works for you and is within your budget. For Twitter, you have choices like Hypefury and TweetHunter.

We've used both.

Typeshare is a great distribution tool for Twitter, Linkedin, and Medium. 

The maxims here are simple: (1) automate what you can't commit to doing manually (2) automate if you want to scale.

Get a big calendar for your wall and mark off each day that you post content with a big, red "X". Keep "X"-ing off the days and pretty soon you'll have a chain of them.

The longer the chain, the harder it is to break the routine.

What are Some Examples? 

Here are two examples of highly successful content creators who also happen to be household names when it comes to comedy.

You know the "chain" analogy above? The person who evangelizes doing that is Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld's greatest genius is consistency. Below, there is a link to an interview Seinfeld does with Tim Ferris talking about this.

The second person who evangelizes consistency is Tina Fey. In her book, Bossy Pants, she wrote the following:

"The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30. This is something Lorne Michaels has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go."

Consistency and preciousness simply don't go together.

What’s the Benefit to You? 

Here are some of the benefits of consistency:

Visibility. People will slowly begin to know who you are and what your business is about.

Searchability. Over time, more content consistently shared will make you more searchable online. 

Quality. The more you do, the better you'll get at it. Some posts will crush it. Some will flop. But the gold is in the "X"s on the calendar. Keep going.

Consistency > Talent.