Sarah Arnold-Hall

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Consistency Is Only One of the Keys

I think “consistency” is the worst thing to happen to social media culture.

(And this is coming from the girl who has consistently blogged for 626 days in a row).

I talk with people all the time whose number one reason for not posting on social media is that they couldn’t keep up with the pressure of being consistent.

So they just stopped posting entirely.

And their project/passion/business fizzled out.

Because in our digital culture, we’ve confused consistency with perfection.

And perfection paralyzes us from taking ANY action at all.

What we think consistency on social media means:

  • Posting at the same time each day

  • Having a particular day of the week for livestreams

  • Making sure our quote graphics fit our exact branding

  • Using the same fonts all the time

  • Putting the same filters on every picture

  • Always writing with the same tone of voice

  • Having a checkered "one-picture-then-one-quote" layout

  • Planning content months ahead of time

What consistency on social media actually means:

You. Showing up. With value. Again and again.

(And if you think for a second that consistency alone is what grows a social media following, you've been duped. People don't follow you because you post Reels every day. They follow you because your content is valuable to them, no matter how often it comes out.)

Consistency is ONE of the keys to success.

But value is even key-er.

What if instead of trying to be perfectly consistent on social media, you just tried to be valuable?