The Beatles recorded 237 original songs (source), 17 of which went on to be number one (source).
Picasso completed an estimated 13,500 paintings (source)
Samuel L. Jackson has appeared in 122 movies (source)
The point?
Great Extraordinary artists have created more content than the average person can imagine, all for the sake of content creation…not perfection.
Time and time again, I find myself getting caught up on a blog post or a longer-form piece of content. Maybe it’s a certain word that doesn’t sound right. Or maybe it has to do with a particular point that isn’t being addressed fully. Whatever the case, we tend to get caught up on something minor within a piece of content and that ultimately gets in the way of us clicking publish and releasing what could have been an otherwise great article for our audience.
The problem with this?
There is no such thing as the perfect piece of content..and we have to stop trying to create perfect.
Going Viral
With social algorithms changing on a consistent basis, the days of going viral and getting a blog post seen by millions of people are gone. Sorry…it had to be said. Sure certain posts will jump to the top of the newsfeed but, the more we study the articles that do, we find that these typically have to do with serious (often devastating) world events, or a feel good piece of content with high sharability.
STOP TRYING TO GO VIRAL!
That’s not the point of your content marketing initiative.
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STOP creating content with the hopes that it will be the next Buzzfeed article that everybody shares. That is not…and never should be the primary concern of your content marketing efforts.
Don’t Get Hung Up On Grammar
Since January 1, 2015 I’ve published close to 50 blog articles for Haley Marketing Group. Time for a secret. I’ve only had a handful of them proofread and spot checked for grammar. Sure I run spell check in Google Docs when I type my articles, and I also run Grammarly to spot check it a second time, but after that I drop my article into WordPress and click publish.
For me, there’s a better voice to my content when I think less about making sure everything is perfect and worry more about what the heck I’m actually trying to say.
Ultimately, when people read your article they don’t think about the comma you missed or the fact that you used title case instead of sentence case. They care about the takeaway. They care about the overall points that you were trying to make and how those points can help them with their day to day initiatives.
Create for the Sake of Creation Not Perfection
The Beatles recorded and released 237 songs. 17 went on to be number one on the charts. That’s 220 songs that statistically weren’t good enough to be at the top of the charts.
But, what if we flip that. What if we were to poll a room full of people and ask them what their favorite Beatles song was. I guarantee that there would be a healthy mix of answers.
See, what I like…and what you like…are different. AND THAT’S OKAY!
Content marketing, is exactly the same.
Every blog article doesn’t need to be Hey Jude…
The resource that you put together this week might not resonate with your entire audience. It might not climb to the top of the charts and become the most viewed article on your blog. But, that’s okay. It doesn’t have to.
Your article doesn’t have to change the world…it just has to change one person. Just one frustrated candidate needs to come across your blog post, see it, take it to heart and make a change that helps them land their next job for that blog post to be successful.
Create for the sake of creation…not for perfection.
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