There is a pressure that comes with being visible these days. Whether you’re building a business, developing your career, creating something or simply trying to tell people what you do, there is this constant feeling that you need to have something interesting to say and something worth showing. And actually, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I believe in telling stories. I believe businesses should document what they do, celebrate their achievements, show the people behind the work and let people see what makes them different. If nobody knows what you do, how are they supposed to connect with you, support you or become a customer? Being visible matters. But somewhere between “tell your story” and “you need to post every day”, we’ve created another kind of pressure.
The pressure to be interesting all the time.
You see someone else’s post perform brilliantly and suddenly you’re wondering whether you should be doing the same. Someone starts making reels, so you start making reels. Someone launches a podcast, so perhaps you need a podcast. Someone is posting every morning at 6am and suddenly your perfectly reasonable decision to post three times a week makes you feel as though you’re falling behind. And before you know it, you’re creating content because somebody else did. That, to me, is where things become interesting.
Doing something because it genuinely fits your business, your audience and your purpose is one thing. Doing it simply because you’ve seen someone else get attention from it is something completely different. It says quite a lot about us when we stop asking,
Does this make sense for me?”
And start asking;
Why aren’t I doing what they’re doing?”
Not every trend is your trend. Not every platform is your platform. Not every format suits your audience. And not every viral idea deserves to be recreated just because it worked for someone else. The danger here is that in trying so hard to stay visible, we lose the very thing that made people interested in us in the first place. Authenticity gets replaced by imitation. Thoughtfulness gets replaced by speed. And content that could have had meaning becomes something produced simply because we felt we needed to post something.
My view is that we need to get better at asking what we want our content to actually do. Is it there to inform someone? Make them think? Show them something they didn’t know? Start a conversation? Help them understand what you do? Make them laugh? Build trust? Encourage someone to take action? Sometimes it can do several of those things at once, but there should be a reason behind it.
Because impact isn’t always measured by how quickly something gets attention. A post can receive thousands of views and leave very little behind. Another might be seen by fifty people and lead to a conversation that changes someone’s mind, brings someone through your door or makes someone feel that they have finally found a business or organisation that understands them. I’ll take the latter any day.
And then there is rest. This is probably the bit we don’t talk about enough when we talk about content. Creating, documenting and communicating consistently takes energy. So does running a business. You can be committed to your audience without being available to them every waking hour. You can have a quiet week without your brand falling apart. You can take time to think before you post. You can decide that something isn’t right for you, even when everyone else seems to be doing it.
And perhaps most importantly, you can allow your content to sound like you. Because people don’t need another version of someone else’s business. They need to understand what makes you different.
