Consistency Doesn’t Mean What You’ve Been Told It Means
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
The advice sounds deceptively simple. Post daily, do the reels, create carousels, add the hook, don’t forget the call to action and if it doesn’t work for you then you’re just not doing it right. Not that the advice might not be right for you, but that you are the problem. When I tried to be consistent in the way that the marketing world told me to be consistent, it was one of the most exhausting things I have ever tried, not only because of the pure act of figuring out what to post and how to post it, but because of the relentless volume that was required. It was demoralising because it sounded so simple in theory and yet in practice it was tough, and the people dishing out the advice were also, not coincidentally, making money from dishing it out.
The Prescription Has Been Mistaken for the Benefit
Now let me be clear about one thing before we go any further. The experts are not wrong that consistency matters. There is a genuine benefit to staying visible, being findable and being in the minds of the people you want to reach. But the method to achieve those things has been translated into a very specific prescription that includes posting daily and following all manner of other rules, and the prescription has been mistaken for the benefit. So when you try to follow the prescription and it doesn’t work for you, either because it is too exhausting or because all that effort produces nothing, it is very easy to conclude that you are the problem rather than that the advice simply is not right for you.
What is really happening is that someone has taken a very logical and rational idea, which is that you need to be visible and findable, and turned it into something far more complicated and rigid than it needs to be. Who decided that consistency meant posting daily? Where did that definition come from? And more importantly, does it work for you, a founder building the specific thing you are building
Consistency Looks Different for Every Founder
Consistency does not look the same for every founder and it never will. One founder may call posting three times a week consistent while another founder may say exactly the same thing when they post once a week. It is not a like for like comparison because every business is different, every founder is different and every audience is different. That is why I would like to encourage you to find what this word means for you and what it looks like in your business rather than squeezing yourself into someone else’s version of it.
For me, consistency is simply the act of putting out a signal to say I am still here, doing my thing, and I am here when you need me. That is it. That is my entire definition. And I will give you the context as to why. When I discover someone I want to work with, whether a client or a collaborator or a guest for the podcast or just someone I want to know more about, I go on a little detective hunt. I look at their website, I read their socials, I look at their platforms. And what I am looking for is recent content, not to see if they posted yesterday, but to see if they are still doing their thing. If I see content that is three, six, nine months old, I wonder if they are still going. Content that is recent is a signal, a sign, a flag raised to say yes I am still here. But that flag does not have to be fresh every day. It just needs to be there consistently.
Your Presence Is a Shop Door Sign, Not a Daily Performance
That is what I believe consistency actually is. It is a presence. It is like the sign on a shop door that says they are open. They do not need to make a new sign every single day but they do need to make sure the sign is turned the right way so customers know to open the door and come on in. The aim is to be visible, findable and in the minds of the people you want to reach. But what that method is and what it looks like to create that constant presence, that is where you get to decide.
It could be posting online once a month, once a week or not at all, especially if your clients do not use social media. There is no single right answer because the right answer is the one that works for you.
So here is the question I would like you to sit with. What does your version of consistent look like? Not the textbook version, not the version that somebody else is selling you, but yours. Whatever you come up with, bring it to the next post where we will put some meat on the bones and walk through how to figure out your own recipe for building a presence that feels like you rather than a performance you have to keep up.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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