Producing Content Every Day

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

I’m considering the concept of producing content every day. This is a concept that many content producers discuss, and at least a few of them are successful, so maybe it’s worth listening up.

Let me say that this is not a new concept to me. You can ask Miguel… if he answers his damn phone. When we were doing the public access show, I was of the opinion that we should shoot, on average, three minutes of usable footage every day. The reason to do this was so that each month we would produce three episodes worth of content that we could turn into one episode of the best material we had. In truth, part of the reason is because I enjoy creating, and having a bloated goal helped to push us to be creative.

In 2011, Nathan and I set out to have content on the blog every day and we did it for a year. We had guest writers, but it was primarily Nathan and me. I also enjoyed that time. It was difficult sometimes to keep up with the workload, but I think we did some good stuff.

I think that at some point the problem for many people becomes motivation – as in what’s your motive? Is writing every day achieving your motive?

I believe in writing for yourself first and a potential audience second. I want to enjoy what I write. I further believe that there should be enough people out there who are entertained by a reasonable percentage of what I write, and that writing and posting my work can conceivably create a following for my work. In this way, I think that sometimes it’s disappointing when you write something that you know is genuinely good, and no one reads it. That’s where you start wondering if you should just spend a few more hours at work rather than setting aside time to write a blog post each day.

Seth Godin has written a daily blog for many, many years now. His work caught on from this consistency. Maybe it’s because his message is focused mostly in the same space, and maybe it’s because he writes shorter material. It’s definitely because he writes good quality work. The question is whether or not the consistency is just an aspect of his success, or if it’s the most important aspect. Is it maybe the most important aspect as long as the work is of good quality?

Seth Godin believes that we should all write a daily blog, even if the intention of the blog is just as a record of your thoughts for your own purposes. I agree with that concept. I like the fact that I can go to Google and search for something I wrote if I need to use a point, or if I just want to remember when or how something happened.

Gary Vaynerchuk made a point in one of his videos: “I’ve been producing content every day for thirteen years. Like, only in the last eighteen months has it gotten to the critical enough scale where, like, it feels like it’s something different…”

Ok, he deviated from the point a little bit after that. The point is that it took over a decade of daily content for him to reach a tipping point where he had what some might consider a legitimate following.

I think that it can get discouraging when you don’t see even the initial glimmers of your content gaining an audience. To be fair, I haven’t spent a decade doing daily content, but we’ve provided a lot of content.

I think there are a few issues. The first is that your content has to be good, and the definition of good is such a hard thing to pin down. The second is that it has to remain consistently good, not every day has to be good, but overall. The third is that the bigger the audience that you want the more competition you have.

I think that part of the reason for writing daily is that you never know when you’re going to write something good. You never know what thought you might lose if you skip writing for the day. Also, when you frequently clear you head of all the extra thoughts, it sometimes allows new thoughts or refined versions of the old thoughts to enter.

I have story ideas from years ago that haven’t changed in my mind because I either never started them, or I wrote only so far and stopped. Until I write the next scene of these stories, it’s unlikely that my brain will present any new information.

If I have any advice that is my take away from the advice of others on this subject, and my own personal experience, I think it would be the following: Write every day. If you want to work into posting every day by starting at once or twice a week then that’s fine. Get your ideas down as much as you can every day to allow for new thoughts. Plan on an audience possibly taking a while to form, but push for continuous growth.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who plays one on TV. Hmm. I feel like there’s a joke missing. It’s got to be in one of these folders of all the blog stuff I’m working on.