Compounding is often the difference between success and stagnation.
@timsoulo made an excellent point in his "Blogging for Business" course on Ahrefs. He kept trying to grow his blog by writing more frequently, using catchier titles, posting to more communities, sending more emails, etc. But none of it worked. If he stopped writing, his traffic would fall back to where it always was.
The problem is none of it compounded. Emailing and tweeting only reached his existing readers. The communities he posted to eventually flatlined after he saturated them. And it doesn't matter how frequently you post, if ever post eventually falls to zero.
The solution, of course, was SEO: creating content that can potentially bring in more traffic over the long run.
I'm partial to communities, too, unsurprisingly. It's hard to get the ball rolling, but the personal connections and network effects can help you establish a baseline that never quite goes away as you build on top of it.
A friend of mine has adapted some of the techniques that I teach to a very specific audience of podcasters, who regularly follow the same grind of a content cycle you described here:
They put crank out the episodes
They share new episodes on social media
But that new stuff only reaches the people who already know about it.
On the community tip, he's framed his approach as "Targeted Daily Engagement" which if I'm honest, I don't love in terms of jargon, but hearing him describe it and seeing the impact it has on the shows he's taught to use it, it works really well.
Main gist is to stop treating communities like a place to promote your stuff and instead, as a place to participate as a community member. To answer questions right in the comments and do a really good, thoughtful job. To be encouraging. To get to know the mods.
I've found that working a 9to5 job and being a creator on the side, while the concept is easy to understand, it is extremely difficult to believe in enough to implement consistently over the long term.
It definitely hasn't been "the easy" or "sexy" approach (for me). Yet, once I've experienced it first hand, I now can't think of any other approach to move towards success.
The problem was... my own mind. It consistently got in my way. To push it aside I've had to take some drastic measures along with seeking out resources to help me think differently.
There are several resources, but a great free read that has been a huge help is https://www.navalmanack.com who talks about it in great length.
Compounding is often the difference between success and stagnation.
@timsoulo made an excellent point in his "Blogging for Business" course on Ahrefs. He kept trying to grow his blog by writing more frequently, using catchier titles, posting to more communities, sending more emails, etc. But none of it worked. If he stopped writing, his traffic would fall back to where it always was.
The problem is none of it compounded. Emailing and tweeting only reached his existing readers. The communities he posted to eventually flatlined after he saturated them. And it doesn't matter how frequently you post, if ever post eventually falls to zero.
The solution, of course, was SEO: creating content that can potentially bring in more traffic over the long run.
I'm partial to communities, too, unsurprisingly. It's hard to get the ball rolling, but the personal connections and network effects can help you establish a baseline that never quite goes away as you build on top of it.
Totally agree!
A friend of mine has adapted some of the techniques that I teach to a very specific audience of podcasters, who regularly follow the same grind of a content cycle you described here:
On the community tip, he's framed his approach as "Targeted Daily Engagement" which if I'm honest, I don't love in terms of jargon, but hearing him describe it and seeing the impact it has on the shows he's taught to use it, it works really well.
Main gist is to stop treating communities like a place to promote your stuff and instead, as a place to participate as a community member. To answer questions right in the comments and do a really good, thoughtful job. To be encouraging. To get to know the mods.
He broke it down in a Clubhouse room last week, and then turned that recording into his latest podcast episode (which is some smart meta-application of the principle itself!)
I love the idea of compounding, but...
I've found that working a 9to5 job and being a creator on the side, while the concept is easy to understand, it is extremely difficult to believe in enough to implement consistently over the long term.
It definitely hasn't been "the easy" or "sexy" approach (for me). Yet, once I've experienced it first hand, I now can't think of any other approach to move towards success.
The problem was... my own mind. It consistently got in my way. To push it aside I've had to take some drastic measures along with seeking out resources to help me think differently.
There are several resources, but a great free read that has been a huge help is https://www.navalmanack.com who talks about it in great length.