Dan Willis argues that consistency beats quality alone. He explains how a reliable publishing schedule and a pre-produced video buffer protect your growth from disruptions like illness or internet outages, and shares how missing daily uploads during the holidays hurt his performance.
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Feel like your team's creating great content but you're not seeing the success that you think you should out of it? Stick around, I'm going to give you an idea of what the key is to great social media content. Welcome back guys, we're doing that video grind, pumping out a ton of these things, we're up to episode 22 now. Having a blast. This video actually came out of one of my failures starting this new YouTube channel, and I know I'm only 20 videos in, so how many failures could I possibly have had? You should go check out some of my earlier videos. No audio. Anyway, all kinds of great things come from learning from your failures, and this is one that came from that. The question keeps popping up in a lot of the forums that I'm in. A lot of my clients are asking this, and they're saying. Listen, we feel like we are creating cutting-edge, top-quality content over and over and over again. We put it out there and it should be blowing people away. And the reality is it's not. It flops. We put it out, we're so sure it's gonna do well, and it just bombs. Here's why, guys. There is so much content out on the internet right now, it's overwhelming. People are drinking from a fire hose from the time they wake up Until the time they go to bed. And this isn't gonna be one of those stereotypical rants where I tell you, oh, it's all about quality, guys, 'cause most of you who have seen my earlier videos know that I am no advocate for focusing on quality to the point where it's going to destroy the quantity that you're putting out. But the advice that I've given in the past of quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity can also be detrimental. And here's what I'm talking about. Okay guys, consistency is also key, okay? And it's consistent— consistency across your quality and your quantity. And what I mean by that is this: if you look at my first video on YouTube and my last video on YouTube, there should be a visible increase in quality because I'm consistently improving the medium, okay? And what I mean by that is this: If you are working every day on a blog, a podcast, a vlog, a YouTube channel, you name it, whatever it is that you're working on daily, your familiarity with the tools and the content should be improving as you use it more often and more frequently. So again, there's another point in the corner of creating quantity content. The more you do it, the more you become accustomed to it, the more you innovate through it, and create better quality content naturally. Okay guys, but consistency is key. So your quality will improve the more consistently you strive to improve throughout the day, throughout the month, throughout the year, whatever it may be, how often you've decided to create content. I recognize that when you are creating quality content for different mediums, it may take you longer than others. And there are certain things like audio that I'm not talking about. If you're a musician, there's no reason why you can't bust out your phone, create something solid in a day. I'm talking about animators, for example. Animators, it takes them 10-15 days to create all the art because they're all doing it by hand, and then they've gotta, you know, put it all together, edit it nicely, create the transitions, making sure that they're pumping out, you know, 60 frames of animation for every second of footage. That takes time. It is intensive. But being consistent on how often you're doing that is going to be of value. What's the screw-up? What's the failure that I had that brought me to the realization that consistency is so valuable? Supposed to be putting out a video every day onto YouTube. Did I do it? Nope. Over Christmas, I got sick. That happens as a dad with a bunch of kids. People get sick. Even people without kids, you're gonna get sick. Things are gonna happen, personal things, weddings, funerals. Birthdays, you know, natural disasters, internet goes down because of a winter storm. That's a reality in Canada. These are things that can affect your consistency if you're not prepared. Okay guys, so really the key is what I want to give you and, and why this is going to break trend from a lot of the people out there is I've in the past said quantity, quantity, quantity. Pump it out there, pump it out there, pump it out there. And I stand by that, but be consistent with that. If you commit to being a daily video content provider like I'm doing, you have to have backups. Always be prepared. So what does this mean? It actually means more work, not less. What this translates to is this, guys. Super simple concept of this. If you are committing to do a daily video and you potentially see, let's say, an illness will knock you out for a week, or power, you know, can go out for 3 days at a time. That means what you need to be doing is consistently having a bank of videos on the side that you can have ready to go and upload at a moment's notice. Oh, the best I can do for internet connection today is get to a McDonald's or Tim Hortons and upload from a drive to YouTube? So be it. But have the video prepped ahead of time, and that makes the quality a lot more consistent to what you're doing. Rather than trying to shoot a video inside of McDonald's, right? So, consistency is key, guys. Whatever you commit to as far as quality or timing, you have to make that a firm commitment as you move into the new year. I promise you, with this channel, I've learned my lesson. Today I'm gonna knock out 3 to 5 videos just so that I have that buffer sitting there. Let me know what you think are some of the biggest issues with consistency in the comments below. And if you like what you saw and wanna keep tuned for future videos, That are gonna be coming out daily for the next year, go ahead and hit that subscribe button over here and let your friends and family know. We'll see you for the next video, guys. Take it easy. Bye.
