This one trait will determine if you find success through a personal brand

Don’t worry, I won’t make you wait to find out. It’s *consistency*.

Consistency is the most important component to success in establishing a strong personal brand, becoming an influencer in a particular market, or becoming known as a thought leader.

While some folks will have success through virality or striking it lucky with a unique niche or position, that is the exception and not the norm. Also, for those who go viral, that virality only lasts so long. Without a consistent flow of content, the “success” of virality is incredibly fleeting. You’ll often find that for influencers who go viral and are able to make that success stick, they had been consistent LONG before they became fortunate enough to have a piece of content go viral. Along those same lines, if you go viral and fail to become consistent, you’ll lose your audience (and the very fleeting love of the algorithms). After all, if people see your viral piece of content and are intrigued enough to check out your profile or website but find a dead end, they have nothing to stick around for. You’ll lose that momentum.

So, how do you build consistency in your content posting schedule?

Don’t be perfect – be reliable, be real

Don’t focus on creating perfect content.

Focus on creating helpful content on a very regular basis so that your audience gets to know the real you and can count on you as a reliable resource. Build that relationship.

When I taught personal branding for MBA students at the University of Nevada, Reno, I’d liken building a strong personal brand to building a strong body. Bodybuilders, runners, yogis – none of them have an inconsistent mindset. They each build strength and resilience by consistently practicing their sport, making incremental improvements, and through that consistency, they eventually see incredible results. The same is true for building an engaged audience.

Take a look at all these successful influencers:

Katie Steckly.

Katie makes content about how to build a YouTube channel and successful personal brand. She has 286k subscribers on this channel (she has a few different YouTube channels and brands that she now owns) and has been making videos for over a decade. This channel has 820 videos. Check out how often she is posting:

She is consistently posting videos to YouTube at least 2 to 3 times per week!

Here’s another example:

Marques Brownlee.

He goes by MKBHD and creates content about tech and consumer electronics. He’s got a massive following: 19.1 million subscribers and 1.6k videos. Even with that audience size, check out how often he is posting videos …

Again, he’s posting 2-3 times a week, at least! Even with a massive following, MKBHD knows how important it is to consistently create content for success.

Go to any influencer you follow or can think of. You’ll start to see this pattern. The biggest influencers create content multiple times a week. Do they always do that? No. Some of them do it for years until they reach a certain threshold and then back off their schedule a bit, at least on certain platforms, but the majority continue to post rigorously. (One influencer who posted every three days for years and then once she reached a million followers has started to just post one video, weekly, is Sarah’s Day. That strategy has worked for her, but she has also diversified her brand and posts multiple times a week to Instagram to stay engaged with her audience between longer YouTube videos and she has other revenue streams like her cookbook, workout eBooks and brand deals.)

Is it enough to post consistently? No. You do have to have helpful, engaging content. But, I can tell you if you don’t create content consistently, you will almost certainly not create a successful brand. You HAVE to be consistent.

Content matters

Don’t get me wrong – you still need to have helpful, engaging content that adds value to others’ lives. Your value lies in how you can help others (even if that help is in the form of making them laugh, smile, or feel like they can relate).

Create content that is helpful, reliably, and you’ll build a successful brand. You also do want to find a niche that interests you and that you won’t tire of. Because let me tell you something … you’re going to have to create a LOT of content about it.

Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you thought of this post with a like, a share, or a comment! I always desire to connect with folks and want to learn from you, too.