In last month’s newsletter, I featured a tip from Future of Ag podcaster Tim Hammerich that kept resonating with me as it pertains to content creation:

“Also – and this is cliche because it is true – consistency over time is the key (it’s also the hard part).”

You might think this whole ‘consistency is key’ thing would be evident to me, having helped produce over 200 editions of Magnetic Ag.

But, sometimes, I miss the forest for the trees, and I’ve definitely taken for granted the consistency muscle we’ve built behind the scenes of the newsletter.

And there’s something to be said about how consistency can be such a powerful component of your content creation engine. I see it often with the ag brands we work with at Imagine Content.

It’s a theme I saw echoed in an article I read last week…

Brought to me by one of my more random newsletter subscriptions (shoutout to Twosday✌️- check ’em out here), the article was titled “Two insights from losing a pickleball tournament.”

They had me at pickleball.

Luke, the author, shared an experience where he and a friend lost in the first round of a tourney to two teenagers.

Is that better or worse than losing to your parents and their friends at their Fort Myers retirement community? Asking for a friend.

Luke chalked up his team’s loss to the idea that they didn’t execute consistently, and it was clear that the guys boys on the other team practiced more regularly.

Here’s an excerpt:

“About 75% of all lost rallies in pickleball are unforced errors. For me, many of those errors happen when I try an intense shot rather than a consistent one.

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Like sports, we tend to win in the areas of life where we practice the most. (Unless you’re Allen Iverson and don’t want to talk about practice.)

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And if practice leads to consistency and consistency leads to winning, then patience is the virtue of champions. Success is often the result of enduring ordinary work for an extraordinary amount of time. Patience produces long-term results that passion can’t.“

Here’s the thing: I don’t think many folks are talking about ‘intensity’ related to content creation, but it’s a phantom road block for some organizations. They believe they have to be producing blockbuster pieces of content or shelling out new insights on the daily.

And there are usually two reactions I see when companies are discussing their content plans:

• Reaction A: “We’re so behind the 8-ball, our blog is practically empty,…” and they get so dejected that they can’t get the momentum to start.
• Reaction B: “Let’s plan a 12-episode podcast series where we interview industry stakeholders combined with an AMA segment for our product designers…” and suddenly you are committed to a content plan that is suffocatingly tough to execute and is built around little evidence that it will even be of interest to listeners. Or worse yet, you’re doubling down on a content form that prospects might not typically consume. 😑

The point is that you need to start somewhere, and you need to plan to be consistent. You don’t have to tie yourself down with a concrete 12-month content plan, but at least get an outline in place to get the ball rolling.

Then, once you take off the content training wheels, it’s time to ramp up. At that point, you’ll start forming habits around a content production process, repurposing, SEO best practices, and a distribution strategy that lets you work smarter, not harder.

But in the meantime…

Start small. Stay consistent. And just get that content flywheel starting to spin.