The Power of Consistency

 

Right now, the most popular things I create are The Punksters animated comedy shorts. Their growing audience did not appear because of one lucky upload or a brief burst of productivity. It began with something much less dramatic but far more dependable: consistency.

I had stopped producing the shorts for approximately six months so I could concentrate on other projects. Once those projects were completed, I resumed production. During part of that period, I had also stopped posting on Instagram because I was focusing more heavily on other platforms, especially TikTok.

However, I had never stopped building my body of work. By the time I resumed posting on Instagram, I had accumulated 260 animated shorts.

At one post per day, 260 shorts gave me more than eight months of daily material without repeating a single one. I could post every day while continuing to create new shorts and expand the backlog even further.

That is one of the most practical benefits of consistency: it reduces stress.

Consistency Eliminates the Daily Scramble

Many content creators wake up wondering what they are going to post that day. They may feel pressured to invent something, create it, finish it, and publish it before the day is over. If an idea does not come quickly, the pressure becomes even greater.

I do not have to work that way.

Because I consistently created shorts before I needed to post them, I built a substantial reserve. I do not have to hurry through a new production merely to keep my page active. I can choose the next completed short from my collection, publish it, and continue creating at my normal pace.

The work still has to be done, of course. Consistency does not eliminate the work. It changes when the pressure is felt. Instead of repeatedly facing an urgent deadline, I steadily do the work in advance. Each completed short becomes another day when I will not have to scramble for something to post.

A backlog is more than stored content. It is stored time, stored effort, and stored peace of mind.

Consistency Teaches an Audience to Return

The second advantage is that people learn they can count on me to continue providing new shorts.

When someone enjoys one of my videos, that person can visit my profile and find many more. If they return later, there will be something new waiting for them. Often, people do not watch only one short. They watch several of them.

Some will leave likes or comments on a number of posts. Others will repost or share them. Then there are the highly enthusiastic followers who will do all of those things across multiple posts.

That kind of audience behavior is extremely valuable, but it begins with consistency. People need a reason to believe that returning to your page will be worthwhile.

One post can attract attention. A growing catalog gives that attention somewhere to go.

When viewers watch several shorts, engage with them, and share them, older work gains new life. A short does not necessarily disappear merely because it was not posted today. It remains part of the collection that new viewers can discover and devoted followers can revisit.

Reposts and shares also become a form of advertising. Viewers introduce my work to people I may never have reached on my own. I do not pay them to promote it. They do it because they enjoyed it enough to place it in front of someone else.

But none of that happens without work for them to discover.

Consistency Works Across Platforms

I do not consistently post only on Instagram. I also post on Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

Instagram currently gives me the strongest overall response. My follower count is growing faster there, and the average view count per video is higher. I currently have more followers on TikTok, but if the present trend continues, my Instagram following will eventually surpass it.

That does not make TikTok unimportant. I have devoted followers there who return frequently and leave some of the nicest comments I receive. In fact, some of my best comments have come from TikTok even though the view counts are not as high as they are on Instagram.

I receive good comments on Instagram as well, but each platform contributes something different.

This is another reason consistency matters. Not every platform will respond at the same speed or in the same way. One may deliver more views. Another may produce more thoughtful comments. A third may grow slowly before suddenly beginning to gain momentum.

If I judged everything by the immediate response to a single post, I might give up on a platform before it had time to produce anything meaningful. Consistent posting gives each platform repeated opportunities to connect my work with the right audience.

The Consistency Behind the Consistency

Daily posting is only the visible part of the process. Several other habits have to occur consistently before a finished short ever appears online.

I accumulate scripts and ideas daily and save them in Windows text files using Notepad. I consistently write the short scripts. I consistently turn those scripts into animated videos. I consistently add the completed videos to my catalog. Then I consistently post them across multiple platforms.

Each habit supports the next one:

• Consistent observation produces ideas.
• Consistent writing produces scripts.
• Consistent production creates finished shorts.
• Consistent cataloging builds a backlog.
• Consistent posting builds visibility.
• Consistent visibility builds familiarity and trust.

People usually notice only the final stage. They see the daily post. They do not see all the smaller acts of consistency that made the daily post possible.

Consistency Builds More Than One Kind of Success

Although animated shorts are the form of content with which I have most firmly established myself, I consistently create other things as well.

I write entries for four different blogs, including this one. I try to publish one entry each week for every blog. Over the course of a year, that can amount to more than 200 blog entries.

Two of the blogs focus primarily on information, education, motivation, and inspiration. The other two are more entertainment-oriented.

I have also written lyrics for more than 130 songs, created songs around those lyrics, and regularly produced lyric videos for them. I post new lyric videos weekly as I continue building the Craypoe Productions music catalog.

That is a lot of work spread across many forms of content creation, but I love doing it. The subjects, formats, and audiences may differ, yet the same principle supports all of them.

I show up. I create. I finish things. I publish them. Then I do it again.

Over time, that process produces results that no single day of effort could create. Views accumulate. Listens accumulate. Followers accumulate. Blog entries, songs, videos, scripts, and ideas accumulate. The backlog grows. People return to see what is new. Some become regular viewers. Some share the work and help introduce it to others.

Consistency Creates Possibility

Consistency does not guarantee that every post will succeed. Some shorts will receive more views than others. Some songs will attract more listeners. Some blog entries will connect deeply with readers, while others may initially receive little attention.

The purpose of consistency is not to make every individual creation perform equally well. Its power is that it continually creates new opportunities for something to connect.

Every new short is another chance to reach a viewer. Every song is another chance to reach a listener. Every blog entry is another chance to help, inform, encourage, or entertain someone. Every day of creation adds something to a body of work that did not exist before.

That body of work eventually becomes an asset of its own.

My 260-short backlog did not materialize overnight. My song catalog was not written in one weekend. More than 200 potential blog entries per year are not produced in a single burst of inspiration. These things exist because I keep returning to the work.

That is the power of consistency. It gives you material when you need it, reduces the stress of constantly starting from nothing, gives audiences a reason to return, and allows small results to compound into something substantial.

You do not have to accomplish everything today. You simply have to keep showing up, keep creating, and keep adding the next piece.

Over time, those pieces become a catalog. The catalog becomes an audience. The audience becomes a community. And it all begins with consistency.

Bob Craypoe
Founder of Craypoe Productions®