Breaking Down “Consistent” Content Creation for Sustainable Success

Consistency is king but what it really means isn’t well understood

It is a common belief that consistency in content creation is probably the single most important factor in terms of strategy.

However, consistency doesn’t necessarily only refer to pushing out content at an appropriate frequency — i.e. consistency isn’t just a quantitative measure. Another equally, if not more important factor, is the consistency of the quality of content generated.

Mckinsey conducted a study to understand the customer preferences of 27,000 consumers across 14 different industries to understand what are the most important factors that contribute to the overall customer experience.

The answer they came up with was the 3 C’s of customer experience — Consistency, Consistency, and Consistency.

The consistencies that they referred to were — customer-journey consistency, emotional consistency, and communication consistency.

While the study deals with consistency in terms of brands and industries, I would like to extrapolate the same for content creation, and how their application can significantly elevate the quality of your content.

Customer-journey Consistency

As a content creator, your audience is your customer — whether your readers, your viewers, or your listeners, as the case may be.

Every touchpoint that your audience has with your content is essentially part of their journey. What does this mean in tangible terms?

• Consistency across content type — As a content creator, you may reach your audience via various content formats— blogposts, articles, e-books, videos, podcasts, etc. However, having consistency across the underlying message or the “personality” of your content is important.
• Consistency across platforms — There are also a variety of platforms that your content will likely be shared via — professional networks such as LinkedIn, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., and more commercial channels such as Amazon. As a successful content creator, your image across these platforms should ideally stay consistent.

Communications consultancy Deschenes Regnier suggests a couple of basic to-do’s that can help achieve this desired consistency. These are briefly explained below.

• Your tone and voice across your content should be consistent. Some creators are all about personal experiences, while others base their work on primary or secondary research. The key is to pick a style and stick with it.
• Being “selective” about your content — i.e. marrying quality with quantity. Even if you continue to post content regularly, ensuring you act as a quality filter for your audience is an important factor.

A very simple yet key example of adding a “brand recognition” to your content is what Coca-Cola achieves by keeping all their communication and branding with an undertone of the color red. While the original usage of the color red was to distinguish their branding from alcoholic beverages, but the company has stuck with a key element that defines their brand.

Emotional Consistency

This factor essentially revolves around the element of “trust.” For your audience to come back to your content over and over again, they need to be able to feel a connection with you as the creator.

It isn’t like each of the 100mn+ subscribers that top Youtuber Pewdiepie has can claim to “know” him personally, but each of them in their own way trust him to put out content that would in some way appeal to them. There’s a very simple litmus test to ensure emotional consistency.

Every time you post something, ask yourself this one question:

Does my content appeal to or invoke one or more emotion?

This emotion could be anything — excitement, nostalgia, horror, joy, empathy, or any of the numerous human emotions on the broad spectrum. This helps give a human element adding to the personality of your brand and in turn your content.

While it would be wonderful to believe that the whole world works on logic and rationale, emotions play a huge role in what we consume.

Research on the impact of emotional appeal on brand value indicates that the emotional bond created by a brand is the most salient factor related to purchase. In terms of content, this translates into emotional connect being a key factor in creating a long-term loyal audience.

Communication Consistency

The Mckinsey study summarizes the “communication consistency” beautifully in a single line, that I will then elaborate on:

A company’s brand is driven by more than the combination of promises made and promises kept.

The combination of promises made and the promises kept — this is really the essence of the relationship between the content creator and the consumer.

After the success of the first book in the Harry Potter series — Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling’s initial set of fans picked up her second book with an expectation that was drawn from the promise of her first book.

This is exactly what communication consistency is all about. Does every message that you give, or every piece of content that you create deliver on its promise to the customer. Some basic checks to keep in mind are:

• Avoid clickbait — Clickbait is often misunderstood to mean anything that’s “catchy.” That’s far from the truth. Catchy is great, but clickbait is not. Clickbait is the kind of catchy that promises something exciting but fails to deliver on that promise. Breaking the trust of your consumer is the last thing you want — so avoid clickbait at all costs.
• Analyze your audience — The best creators understand their audience extremely well. They know exactly who their consumers are, what they like, what they dislike, what is of significance to them, how their preferences evolve over time. They not only have this “data” but also know what to do with it. Constant evolution is a key part of successful content creation.
• Engage — Different creators choose different levels of “engagement” with their audience outside of their actual content. Some are responsive to comments, fan mail, feedback, and even host “ask me anything” type sessions, while others don’t even like to publicly engage at all. Yet, there are always ways and methods in which a creator engages with their audience. Choose your style and frequency of engagement — and stick to it. The key here again is being consistent in your approach.
• Embrace feedback — We’re all human, and have constant scope for improvement in whatever we do. Listening to your audience to understand their likes and dislikes, positive and negative feedback, and trying to incorporate that in your process is an integral part of successful content generation.

Once you’ve incorporated these elements of consistency into your process, they’ll start to reflect in your output and become an integral part of your brand. This will hopefully then translate into not only a bigger but also a deeper reach and a stronger relationship with your consumers.

“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose and of action over a long period of time.” — Bruce Springsteen