Don't chase perfect.

Let perfect surprise you like the sun breaking through the clouds

I remember a morning in May this year – a particular morning when the weather was ‘just right’.

I don’t remember the date, but I remember it was 9.16am when I said to my wife: ‘The weather is just perfect’.

We were walking with our two young boys in a forest in Fleet, Hampshire, UK.

Why was it perfect? It just was. Nice temperature, gentle breeze, dry but breathable.

Five minutes later, it was too hot. Grrr! Why couldn’t it have stayed like this?

True to the stereotypical Britishness of me, I was once again bemoaning the current weather.

The increasingly ubiquitous and fascinating Gary Vaynerchuk has a really good take perfectionism and not chasing unrealistic goals.

If you watch his content, he’s all about the ‘cut the crap, do what you enjoy and bring value to people’. (That’s not a quote from him, it’s my description of his approach, just to be clear!)

I think this is a really important attitude to have, particularly when it comes to putting your own content out there.

If you have a tendency to not post content because you’re afraid it’s not perfect and won’t perform well, then I can 100 per cent guarantee you that that not-posted content won’t perform well.

It won’t perform at all because it doesn’t exist.

Let me be a super transparent here. I fall into this trap a lot. For me it takes real, intentional effort (and sometimes some guts) to put out a thought or take on something that’s mine.

It’s the vulnerability. It’s the ‘what if I get laughed at?’ (which I have a painful memory of happening once with a blog post several years ago).

Now the flip side of this is just putting content out meaninglessly and not thinking much about why or what you’re doing. Which is perhaps the polar opposite, the other extreme.

‘Churnalism’, scattergun, spammy approaches are… well, just… spammy really, and one could argue even worse than hiding your light under a bushel.

So how can we be wise here, and get a good balanced approach to how we put out content?

I think it’s good to look at three quite top level things: Identity, Audience and Goals.

1. Identity

   Look at yourself and ask yourself what you bring to the table, and what is your ‘thing’ your subject or perspective you are passionate about? What are you positively adding to an existing conversation?

2. Audience

   Who are you speaking to, who do you want to speak to, what do they care about, and how will they likely resonate with what you have to say? And don’t forget to listen to your audience and see how things are going for you.

3. Goals

   What do you really want to achieve? Maybe it’s to increase your thought leadership reputation, or to spread the message of a cause far and wide, or maybe just to boost sales of a product or service.

So to get to the sweet spot between ‘I don’t know what to post, so I won’t post’ vs. ‘I’ll just post regardless and hope something sticks’, consider these three things first.

Identity, Audience and Goals.

I think the more you reflect on them, the more you let them mature in your thinking, the easier your content will be to create, and the easier your decision about ‘should I post it’ will be.

The weather is fickle, but the sun is always shining behind the clouds…

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Take care for now,

Andrew.

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