The Super Power of Consistency
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In this article I wanted to talk about (okay, well write about) the importance of being consistent.
Whilst being consistent is vitally important on social media, for reasons I’ll go into in a minute, this actually applies to all aspects of your life and business.
If you are trying to get fit, going to the gym one or two days a month is not going to cut it I am afraid. It’s the same with all aspects of your business. One Facebook post or one email to your mailing list is unlikely to make your business a roaring success on its own.
Instead success comes from repeating the same actions (assuming they are the right actions of course), again and again over time, so that the effects become cumulative. it’s no use just doing things now and again or whenever you feel like it. If you want to get fit you need to take regular exercise, if you want to be successful on Facebook you need to commit to posting every day.
Consistency on Social Media
The problem with any social media channel (well, actually this is true for any marketing communication) is that not everyone will see your updates, so you need to make sure that you are posting regularly in order for your audience to see enough of your content to be influenced by it.
Before someone can buy from you they first need to ‘know’, ‘like’ and ‘trust’ you, but this does not happen overnight. In face-to-face communications this can be achieved very quickly, but with online marketing it takes a lot longer to build relationships to the point that people are ready to take the next step with your business.
Here are two things that you can do right now to improve your consistency on social media:
Use a scheduling tool like BufferApp or HootSuite to schedule your posts in advance. I tend to use Facebook’s native scheduling tool to schedule my posts on Facebook, then BufferApp to schedule updates to all my other social media channels. Spend a bit of time and schedule in posts for the next 7 days, then you can sit back and relax knowing that your posts are taken care of for the next week.
Ninja Tip Use – Use Edgar to re-schedule your evergreen content, giving you a consistent presence without the need to constantly create new content.
Schedule time in your diary – In the same way that you would mark an appointment with a client or a supplier in your diary, you should also use your diary system to schedule in time for these important tasks. Try to batch your activities so you do all your similar type of things at the same time e.g. spending an hour to create a week’s worth of social media posts.
I would recommend using Google Calendar for scheduling your work-load. You can colour code different activities to keep different aspects of your work/life separate and easily move tasks to different times or days if you need to keep your schedule fluid.
Conclusion
Consistency can be one of the toughest of nuts to crack in life and business, but if you make a commitment to regularly doing the activities you know you need to do in order to move the needle for your business, before long they will become a habit and it will require a lot less effort to keep them up.
