One of the things I personally struggle with is putting something into the world that isn’t my best work. As anyone who’s ever been unlucky enough to be a part of a game night with me could attest, I’m incredibly competitive. I like winning and I love being the best at something. I’ve never been happy playing sports I’m mediocre at because it drives me crazy, hence why I rarely golf. Now, I even have to force myself to play sports I excel at because with age I’m no longer anywhere near as good as I once was. But, when it comes to content creation I simply don’t have a choice. Because in that world, being consistently good is significantly more important than being occasionally great, here’s why.

Social algorithms reward volume. I always tell creators of all kinds, on-air and online, to talk and write as long as the content warrants. Economy of words is one of the most important skills we can learn as creators. That editing skill does somewhat translate to social media, because the best content tends to work well. But overall, on social media, frequency is more important than quality because of the way the algorithms have been written. They’re all built around crowdsourcing content creation. With the general idea being that the more people they have on their platforms, and the more content each of those people create, the higher the volume of content they’ll have to attract more eyes and ears. So, the more often we post content the more likely the algorithm will favor us. Creating a high volume of content also has the side benefit of allowing us to determine what’s working and what isn’t so we know what to focus on.

The internet rewards timely and topical. One of the big changes the internet brought about is immediacy. For better or worse, most would argue worse, it’s rewired our brains to expect to get what we want right when we want it and not a few days later. I still absolutely believe in pre-planning and being strategic about what we go on-air with, because terrestrial radio tends to reward the ones that do it best rather than the ones that do it first. But, the internet, on the other hand, generally rewards the ones who do it well very quickly. That’s why you’re seeing a lot more emergency pods from top news and political podcasters now because everyone wants to be first, hence why it’s important to have a content creator tool kit to travel with. It’s also what made even established and credible news organizations begin going on-air with things before they were 100% sure they were correct and just cleaning them up later when necessary. Unfortunately, that switch turned most of them into entertainment services instead of news services.

Regularly blogging massively improves SEO, search engine optimization. That’s because the more indexed pages you have the more volume you’ve fed into those search engines to comb through and hence the more likely it will be to recommend your site. Obviously understanding key words helps as well, but the most important thing is to consistently create new blog posts (or articles). I’ve said it before, but it remains true. The main way I’ve generated, and closed, leads for my consulting company is by blogging once a week on my consulting site for the past six years and of course sending it out with this newsletter. Because A) it helps more people organically stumble on my site (SEO) and B) sharing my thoughts on radio regularly means that those who do contact me already know my philosophy.

I get it, putting out something that seems half baked is tough. When I’ve recorded music, the only thing that kept me from redoing things over and over is financial limitations, studio time isn’t free. I have additional thoughts, many of which seem better, after every podcast I record. At least with blogs and articles you can revise them, but once you put a pod or video into the world it’s there for eternity (unless you opt to delete it of course). So, I understand the fear. But, perfectionists won’t win in this digital age. To compete today we all have to be a little more comfortable with being consistently good rather than being occasionally great. Strategically using the right AI tools will not only help us with volume and frequency, it can also improve the quality of everything we create.

What do you think? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.

Pic generated by AI using Envato Labs.