You might have heard it before, but consistency pays off for real. It’s no BS. Especially if you’re trying to get yourself noticed.
Even better yet: build a following of fans.
Do you want to drive traffic to your website and grow an email list? Or get people to notice your product so they can see what value it delivers them? Putting out content on a regular basis and doing so no matter what will help you to win in the long run.
Consistency Explained
The man in the featured image was the best image I could find with regards to consistency; by placing a stamp and repeating the same job in a consistent fashion, he truly creates “a bigger picture” that will gain him value over time.
Consistency is defined by the Oxford dictionary as follows:
As you can see, it isn’t that spectacular of a noun. If you perform consistent behavior for your product, you’re already there. And you don’t even need to up the ante over time.
What’s key with consistency is that you perform a routine, and keep executing it in a way that people can catch up with your intent.
Where you might be writing and publishing content on a regular interval to make your blog more attractive, writing a paragraph each day might be how consistency looks for an eBook.
Publishing one tutorial or course lesson each month, or even keeping your course updated twice a year might be how consistency for your online courses might look like.
Showing up each day to get the job done is the most basic execution of consistency that you can do.
Shipharder.com
And if you’re in the business of creating viable products, testing out hypotheses and market demand by testing an idea each week or two might be what consistency for a bootstrapping maker looks like.
If you keep up your routine and efforts, this will eventually be picked up when your target audience, your market, relates to it. If not, you’ll need to refine your routine and steer your consistent effort into the right direction. But keep going. Don’t take weeks off just to recalibrate.
It’s just as when driving; you don’t stop every time you need to go to a curve on the road, right?
Consistency pays off like this. This is backed by numbers and experienced by many. No
It’s Simple, Not Easy ?
Don’t expect big wins after a week. Expect this strategy to work slow, but steady.
Like you’re filling a bathtub with water, and your work is like opening the faucet every time. If you keep doing your job consistently, you will be opening that faucet just a little wider after a while.
Show up each day (or so) and let people know you’re out there. If you do so, you’re fortifying your presence.
If you write compelling and relevant content people will receive your message better.
It is so damn important that you provide value in your content or show how your product provides value to your target audience.
How you might do that, depends on your goals and your product. For a blog – like Shipharder.com – the value that I’m trying to provide is motivating and inspiring content. Content that helps you to rethink what you’re doing or how you want to approach things.
If you keep the primary goals of your product, service, eBook, course, whatever in mind and if you keep consistent at delivering value for it, you will eventually figure out how to talk to your crowd the best.
Thus increasing the odds of your content to become compelling and attractive.
It’s key that when you talk about how you are providing value, you don’t talk features or goals. Tell people what the actual value is that your product provides.
Don’t make people have to translate what you say into the value that it might get them. Skip that step and alk values exclusively, in order to keep the relevance for them obvious.
It might take you some time to see what resonates and what not.
But finding out by regular effort will start to work after a while. Consistency pays off and it will prove itself via the stats:
- How that proof looks like will depend on what you’re doing and who your targeted audience is.
- Your Twitter interactions (likes, retweets, interactions) might go up
- More people might comment on your blog and reach out to you
- Even the increase of people talking shit about you and internet trolls might show you that you’re reaching more people. (Don’t let the negative feedback get you down, though. Ignore it or see if there’s anything that you can learn from it)
Keep going and working at it consistently, but you really need to go beyond sending only. It doesn’t stop at writing tweets. Or posting Facebook messages, or uploading pics to Instagram.
? Reading
? Engaging Is Crucial
Are you aiming to grow a truly valuable audience? Or do you just want to get a shitload of followers?
If you’re aiming for the first, people that your product and/or content resonates with, then you need to engage with those people.
And by engaging, I don’t mean sending out content and broadcasting like a radio channel.
I’m
Find out where your target audience is at. Whether it is the potential users of your product or the people that would dig your content:
- Locate the biggest icons in your field
- Find related subreddits, Facebook and LinkedIn groups
- Search out the most popular relevant online communities
Once you’ve found the places that your target audience is taking part of, become part of those places.
This means more than signing up for an account and digital eavesdropping on what they’ve got to say and what they’re doing.
- Answer questions
- Give feedback.
- Be transparent about why you’re there, and what you’re up to
- Provide value in the feedback, advice, tips, and attributions that you provide
Engaging Doesn’t Equal ??♂️ Sales Talk
Give feedback. Be transparent about what you’re up to. Engaging Doesn’t Equal Sales Talk
Whatever you do, DO NOT SELL.
If all that you’re going to do is push sales pitches and try to convert people you will not be part of the community you’re trying to unlock.and all your efforts will be in vain.
The days where people liked to be groomed into buying your stuff are over. Don’t treat your audience and prospects as cattle.
You need THEM, and if you want your future customers to need you, you need to provide value first.
Sure, you can add a link to your product or add references to your blog post or website.
As long as you’re genuine about what you’re
It is imperative that you provide value when you engage with people and communities.
Example:
I’ve been answering Quora questions consistently for over a month or two. I provided value by contributing knowledge which took me little time to do so.
My top findings on my Quora efforts (so far):
- It resulted in 10K+ views, numerous likes, shares, and some other interactions, growing steady as I contribute on a frequent basis
- I actually provide value by answering questions that I can answer, which is appreciated and positively received.
- By referencing my website if it was relevant and appropriate, I led people to my products
- In other situations, Quora users found out about my website because I put in the effort to write a short user profile where my whereabouts and products are mentioned.
The amount of views, interactions and traffic generated from this can only be reached by being consistent about answering one or two questions each and every day. (so in this situation also, consistency pays off)
As you can see I don’t force people my way like this. And it is a perfect fit for the platform on which I pushed my content (and where I brought value by sharing knowledge).
I keep my messages real and relevant and provide value. Sometimes providing value equals pointing people towards my website and content.
But most of the time I just engage and answer questions. And I don’t push my stuff onto their minds like a sales agent.
? Reading Tip: Take a moment to stop thinking the only route for your project is to create something that will scale massively, and that VC money and growing into a 300 person company within a year is the right path.
I really recommend to check out this book by Paul Jarvis called “Company Of One“. It talks about focussing on providing value, engaging with people and keeping it small instead of growing into another Giant Corp.
How To Let Consistency Work For You
Let’s sum up what you’ve read about so far:
- Consistent work is something that aims for the long run, and it isn’t a quick win
- Whatever you’re doing consistently, you need to do something that resonates with the targeted audience.
- Find out where your audience is, and take part in their world by engaging with them. Consistency will only provide true value if you give value to others on a frequent basis
It might be vague when you read it like that, but these core values are true and logical for many reasons. It is impossible to write a single blog post that tells you how you could do this for every digital product out there.
The characteristics of a blog website are quite different from those of an eBook, those of a mobile app and those of an online course teaching you how to write JavaScript.
So, in the end, I hope that you will at least remember this key takeaway:
If you provide value to a target audience consistently, and in a trustworthy manner, you are actively increasing the chances of getting a wider reach, gaining fans, and receiving value back from your efforts over time.
Shipharder.com
It’s time that you get to it. Work consistent on your product, and let consistency work for you.
Featured Image by Francisco Arnela on Unsplash
Also published on Medium.
[…] As I explained in this post on putting in consistent effort to create value over time, It often takes some time for your product to be found, gaining traction and getting actual users […]