Creating Clarity Newsletter #012

This week, I had a conversation with a solopreneur who was frustrated because her content wasn’t “converting.” 

She had been posting on LinkedIn for three weeks. Three weeks.

She was concerned that no one was engaging with her posts, and her follower count wasn’t growing. Our conversation reminded me of Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare.

Everybody wants to be the hare in today’s fast-paced world – get where you want to go fast. But, here is a simple fact to keep in mind, no matter how many times you read the story, the hare always loses.

Velocity vs. Momentum

If you reframe Aesop’s famous fable and relate it to your content marketing efforts, it’s easy to see the issue at hand; velocity vs. momentum.

Everyone wants velocity today. We want Likes, Hearts, Shares, Retweets, Comments, etc. These vanity metrics are the proof we use to determine if our efforts are working. 

As a result, we start the race with a burst of speed, cranking out content and publishing on as many platforms as possible to increase our velocity and drive up our vanity numbers. 

When those metrics don’t go up high enough or fast enough, we get nervous and assume we’ve failed. We get burnt out, overwhelmed, stressed, or worse; we stop publishing altogether.

Then there’s the tortoise. 

The tortoise isn’t interested in vanity metrics. Instead, the tortoise is interested in momentum, a slow but steady pace to carry it to the finish line. If the tortoise picks up a few followers along the way, great, but its real motivation is to keep moving forward.

The tortoise doesn’t care about the hare’s pace. Instead, it defines its own pace and consistency. 

Be the Tortoise

The person I spoke to about her content was trying to be the hare. She was chasing vanity metrics and putting a lot of pressure on herself and her content, which is not surprising, considering there is no shortage of “influencers” touting their metrics.

“How I grew from zero followers to 80,000 in 90 days.”

The advice I gave her was to forget the metrics and be the tortoise instead. 

Set your pace, one you can maintain in the short-term and sustain over the long haul. Content marketing is a marathon, not a race. 

So establish your pace, gain momentum, and only after consistently posting for months should you consider using automation to turn your content into the hare.

Until then, be the tortoise. 

 That’s it for this week. 

Until next week, Cheers!