Just Be Consistent (And Other Advice That Needs a Disclaimer)

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "just be consistent," I'd be able to hire someone else to be consistent for me.

And look, the advice isn't actually wrong. I've said it myself - minus the really salesy "post every day and make X amount of money" version, but still. I've said it. So before I pull it apart, let me just acknowledge: yes, it comes from a real place.

But.

You knew there was a but coming.

Forcing yourself to create and post every single day, every second day, minimum four times a week - sounds great in a strategy session. Sounds great when you're blocking it in your calendar with the best of intentions. Sounds like absolute garbage when you've had a terrible day and you're sitting there trying to manufacture inspiration from nothing.

And you know what sounds even worse? The content that comes out of it.

More isn't better if more is just... bad

Here's the thing small business owners need to hear: we are not full-time content creators. We're people running businesses, trying to build an audience of humans who actually want to hear from us - people who want to connect, relate, and eventually trust us enough to buy from us.

When the content you're putting out is forced - when there's no love in it, no personality, none of that passion I see from business owners when they get talking about what they actually do - people scroll past. They don't think about it consciously. They just... go. There's so much content in the world now that anything that feels like it was made because someone felt like they had to make it? Gone.

And that hurts your numbers. You might see a short spike if you suddenly start posting more - but once people realise nothing you're putting out is actually for them? They quietly leave, and they don't explain why. You won't get that feedback. You'll just watch things tank and wonder what happened.

Real life comes for the content calendar, always

If you haven't posted in the past week because your four-year-old decided sleep was optional this week, and you had school photos, parent-teacher interviews, a networking event, three client meetings, a customer who needed a bit of extra handholding - and somehow also groceries (somehow) - and you didn't already have content sitting in a library ready to go?

That's okay.

Take the shame spiral out of it.

You were doing it completely from scratch, exhausted, creatively cooked. Of course nothing good came out of it. Take the advice from the gurus - mine included - with a grain of salt. Take what works for your life, your business, your brain, and leave the rest. Because if you try to do everything everyone tells you to do, you'll do nothing. I know because I've been there, I've tried it, it doesn't work.

The consistency that actually matters

Here's where I want to flip this around - because there's another version of "be consistent" that nobody talks about enough, and it's actually the more important one.

Be consistently you.

Your brand, your values, your personality. That stuff.

Picture this: I show up one week - colourful stuff in the background, talking casually, swearing occasionally, bright glasses, the whole vibe. Then the following week I come out in a perfectly tailored grey suit, neutral background, hair straightened, reading from a script word for word.

You'd feel it immediately. Something would feel off. You'd question whether you even know who I am or what to expect from me.

Now yes, I could do both - I spent years in banking and broking, I can absolutely put on a corporate mask. But one's a mask and one's not. And what that does to your audience is it creates this moment of hesitation, this little "wait, what?" that breaks the thread of trust you've been building.

And it's not just visual stuff. It's the opinions you hold. The values you align with. The way you talk to people. You're allowed to change your mind - everyone does - but if you do, explain it. Because your audience has been showing up, getting to know you, starting to trust you based on what you've put out there. If something significant shifts and you don't acknowledge it, they'll wonder if you're being paid to say something, or if they ever really knew you at all.

I've unfollowed people for exactly this. They probably never knew why I left.

Okay but here's an actual solution

I've been a bit negative. Let me fix that.

Batch creating.

Not batch posting - batch creating. There's a difference. The goal is to build a content library so that on the weeks when life absolutely comes for you, you've still got something to work with.

It starts with an ideas library. Screenshots you've scribbled on. A Reddit thread where people were asking brilliant questions. Something a client asked you twice this week (if someone's asked you something twice, that's a post - write it down). Just a messy pile of raw material that lives somewhere you can actually find it.

Then - and this is the important bit - work out when your brain is actually switched on creatively. For a lot of people that's first thing in the morning. For me, it's late afternoon and evening, which clashes spectacularly with kid pickup and dinner and the whole evening chaos. But knowing that is useful.

Block out some time in those windows. More than you think you need. Give yourself permission to skip some of those blocks when life intervenes - that's what the buffer is for.

Then in those blocks, create from your ideas pile. Record everything in one session - set the lighting up once, do your hair once, maybe change your shirt between videos if you want it to look like different days. Or don't. Who cares, really.

And - this is me talking to myself as much as anyone - name your files. Save them in actual folders. I have so many unlabelled videos sitting on my phone that I forget exist. I'm incredibly organised for clients and absolutely feral about my own stuff. Don't be like me on this one.

Nothing's going to blow up

If you take a few days off from posting because life is just A Lot right now, nothing's going to fail. Your stats might dip a little. It's fixable. It's just social media - we've turned it into this massive rule-governed thing with gurus and algorithms and requirements, and sometimes we need to remember that most of the stuff that actually performs well is someone picking up their phone and recording something real, with captions on (always captions - around 80-90% of people watch with sound off, which is a whole other conversation).

Post consistently when you can. Batch create so you have a buffer. And be consistent in the way that actually matters - who you are, what you stand for, how you treat the people watching.

Because you're not here for the algorithm.

You're here for the humans.

Don't catfish 'em. ✨