Oct 11, 2021
I recently had a conversation with a student I wanted to share.
She had just finished the 5 Day Content Challenge and had a long list of blog post topics she wanted to write about. She was so excited about this list and was just about to enroll in Content Made Simple, but…
She hesitated in enrolling because she was worried about signing up and making the official decision to start her blog because she had a sudden burst of anxiety about having to create tons and tons of content.
In the blink of an eye she had convinced herself that in order to be a “real blogger” she’d need to write a thousand blog posts, spend all day on social media, and be chained to her computer all day, every day.
This is a common fear among people who want to start a content channel.
When we look at the “big names” in our areas of expertise we find content going back years and a huge social media presence. Naturally, we feel that in order to “compete,” we have to match their volume of work, which would be, to say the least, intimidating.
I will freely admit that I fell victim to this trap when I was a new content creator, too.
When I first started my mom-lifestyle blog, I posted every day. Yes, you read that right. I wrote a blog post every day. For months.
It didn’t take long to realize that creating that much content was unsustainable.
But, it wasn’t just unsustainable, it wasn’t the most efficient way to grow my blog.
More Isn’t Better
When first starting out, it’s common to want to fill out your content library so that your website looks more impressive. However, just like with chocolate, pizza, and tequila, oftentimes more is just… more.
Instead, focus your efforts on creating high quality content that your audience will find value in and that makes people want to like, comment, and share.
When you spend your time trying to pump out new blog posts, podcasts, or videos, you typically end up with a large bank of mediocre content. This doesn’t serve your audience or your business.
Actually, it can hurt your standing as a go-to authority on your subject to publish half-baked content. You’ll also rank lower in search engines, making it more difficult for people to discover your site.
If you think of my original blog schedule - also known as the fast track to burnout city - I was drafting 5 blog posts per week. That’s 5 posts, plus graphics, plus social shares, plus SEO and meta descriptions, plus… the list goes on.
If instead of publishing 5 posts per week, including all the additional tasks above (and more I’ve likely forgotten about), I had published a single post I would have not only saved myself a ton of time, the post I put out would have been of a much higher quality, and I would have had the time and energy to do other tasks that would have benefited my business.
Promote Your Content
When you spend all your time creating new content, you leave no time to promote your posts or episodes, which is essential to growing your audience. After all, your content could be fantastic, but if no one knows about it, it’s not helping anyone.
The generally accepted rule is that you should spend 20% of your time creating your content and 80% of your time promoting that content. So why do many of us focus so much of our attention on creation when promotion is where it's at?
To a certain extent creating less feels counterintuitive, right? I mean, how can we promote our content if we don’t have a lot of content to promote?
Well, for one thing, we don’t have to take the 80/20 rule completely on its face. Start by rebalancing your time so that, even if you’re not spending 4 times as much of your time on promotion, you’re at least spending slightly more time promoting than on creating. This will help develop the mindset of promotion, and you can gradually increase your promotion:creation ratio.
According to Derek Halpern;
“If you spend time writing a piece of content, and that content only gets 1,000 readers, chances are there are one million other people in the world who can benefit from what you wrote.
Why, then, would you spend more time creating content when you already have something that your ideal customers can benefit from?”
And he has a point.
It’s far easier to find 10,000 more people who are interested in what you’ve already published than it is to write 10 more posts and get 1,000 people to read each of them.
At the end of the day it comes down to 2 essential ideas:
- Quality over quantity. A single piece of content that is fully flushed out, well researched, and thoughtfully composed is more valuable than multiple thrown together pieces - to both business owner and audience.
- The 80/20 rule rules. Finding new people who can benefit from your high-quality, proven content is easier than trying to draft new compelling content.