How to make the most of the compelling power of consistency

Building a reputation depends upon getting known. Do one thing well, draw a community around it and you’ll be on your way to building a brand.

But getting known for one thing depends upon you talking about that one thing, not just once, but for weeks and months and years. How can you do that without boring your audience, or, just as importantly, without boring yourself!

If you’ve been staring at a blank page wondering just how you can write yet another blog about SEO/user design/digital transformation/change management/leadership skills, then this is for you.

Here’s how you can enjoy telling the same story over and over again and reap the benefit of sharing a consistent message.

See it from your audience’s point of view

Your potential audience is seeing thousands of marketing messages a week. The possibilities are endless when it comes to what they could read at any given moment.

Scrolling through Twitter they’re unlikely to think ‘why on earth has Brian written ANOTHER blog on lead generation?’

If they don’t click, they’ll clock the fleeting association ‘Brian = lead generation’ which is better than ‘Brian = nineteenth century portraiture’ or ‘Brian = parking charges’ or ‘who the hell is Brian and why am I following him?” before moving swiftly on.

It’s the repetition of your name and the niche you want to be known for which is essential for building a reputation.

And if they do click, you’ll have the opportunity to teach them something new, and help secure your position as a helpful expert.

Trust takes time and repetition

Consistently share your expertise and your experience, and people will come to know, like and trust you. Don’t worry about your potential audience having heard it all before, see each blog as an opportunity to help them with their challenges and be as useful as you can.

There’s a lot to be said for the security of a familiar message. Trust develops over time, over being seen for doing what you’ll say you do, of adding layers to a story that deepens as your experience grows.

So consistency is important from your audience's point of view. But how can you keep talking about the same thing without ever running out of things to say?

Change your perspective

The image illustrating this blog is from my Instagram feed.

I regularly take pictures of the same view at different times of day, and different times of year. I don’t get tired of it, and these pictures are always the most popular that I share. I sometimes think that if I only shared pictures of this, I’d get more followers than I do by sharing other stuff too.

It’s the same for your niche. Looking at the same subject through a different lens will give you a different picture.

Some jumping off points if you want a different perspective on a familiar subject are:

Answer the entry level questions

When you’re an established expert it can be easy to lose sight of the time when you were just starting out in your area. It’s good to have content that answers the very first beginners questions in your content library. Good from an SEO point of view, but also good for making you slow down and explain things well.

Interview a client

Talk to a client about their challenges and use what you learn as a basis from a blog, or a series of articles. Ask good questions and listen hard to their descriptions of their world. Listening inspires empathetic content which will pull the right readers towards you.

Do some research

Original research can fuel some brilliantly shareable content which can help secure your niche position. From a simple survey to more in depth qualitative research, there’s nothing quite like exploring a territory to help you secure your claim over it.

Become a question collector

Keep a notebook on your desk, or in your phone and write down every question you’re asked by a potential client. Every question is a potential blog post. If one person want to know, you can guarantee that someone else will too.

Secure your sales process

Make sure you’ve got content for every step of the sale. That means content that answers the most simple questions to content that shares your process in action; from short blogs to detailed case studies. A session looking at the gaps in your content from a sales point of view will almost certainly give you ideas for things that you can usefully create.

Experiment with format

Free yourself from the tyranny of just words. If you don’t want to write, try video or audio. If you need a break from blogs, work with a designer to create some visual content that helps make your message memorable. One of the very best bits of content we ever created at Valuable Content was this map with Lizzie Everard.

Essentially it was just another way of us telling the familiar content creation challenge story again, but the entertaining format made it infinitely more likeable and shareable.

What visual content would give you a different spin on your story?

A final word on consistency

Creating content like this, with your audience in mind, should allay your fears about over sharing it. It’s your job as an expert to make yourself easy to find, so sharing consistently is part of the picture too.

Once you’ve written your helpful blog or guide, share it in all the places where your ideal clients hang out. Twitter is so busy that whatever you write will be easy to miss if you only post it once.

Apply the same principles to sharing the content as you did to creating it. Experiment with headlines, change the perspective, and tell the same story consistently, with confidence.