Putting too much pressure on your posts? This is your permission to stop
This topic has come up soooo many times in different conversations with multiple people recently so I thought I’d talk about it here in case you’re in the same boat. The boat being putting too much pressure on yourself, your posts and your content.
Links mentioned in this episode
How I'm getting myself out of a content rut
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Okay, you very nearly didn't get this episode because I got up this morning ready to record something, even though I didn't know what it was gonna be. I got up ready to record something, and the audacity of my neighbors, they were having scaffolding put up. The absolute cheek that they would work on their house when I need to record a podcast episode. So I was not, not particularly thrilled about that.
And the office is at the back of the house, and they were having scaffolding put up at the back, and then I was like, "Oh, do you know what? I'll just go and work downstairs in the front room." Went downstairs, and they were having it at the front as well. And this is, like, my neighbors but one, so that was very noisy, and a little too noisy for my microphone because it was a lot of banging.
And then later on this afternoon, I did the same. I went into the front room. I was like, "Oh, it's a bit quieter in here." And then somebody had parked their motorbike outside of my house and disappeared and just left it running. I don't know whose bike it was. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know why it was running. And I was just like, "Well, this is, this is even worse than the scaffolding," because the scaffolding is, like, a little bang here and there. The bike was noisy and constant.
So you nearly didn't get it, and then it got to, it's now 10 to 4 on the Wednesday, and I'm gonna get this out hopefully today. But it's 10 to 4 now, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's gone silent." I heard the truck drive away and was like, "Do you know what? I'm gonna get on. I'm going to record you an episode," because there has been something that's been coming up quite a lot in conversations that I've been having with clients, in the work that I've been doing over the past few weeks, and multiple people are having the same issue and that is that they are putting too much pressure on themselves and on their posts and on their content.
And this originally came up because I did a content MOT for somebody the other week. So the content MOT is my auditing service. So it's something that I do when people sign up for The Robin Intensive. It starts with, like, a very in-depth audit of what's already going out on someone's profile and really looking into every aspect of the bio. So the photo, the actual bio breakdown, the links that are there, the CTAs for the links, highlights, pinned posts, everything. And then I review the last 16 posts that they've shared just so I get a feel around where they're kind of at with their content, what is working, what isn't working, initial improvements that I can see straight away because obviously I'm detached from the business, so I come in with a completely fresh set of eyes as if I was the paying client and saying, "Okay, this is what I can, this is what I can see needs work straight away."
And I also offer it as The Content MOT, which is a separate service, it's an individual service on its own. So I've been carrying out a few of these audits recently, and the first part of the audit is me really reading through and understanding the client through the questionnaire that they complete. So you sign up, fill out a questionnaire, I read through that in depth, then start the audit. And for this particular client, the thing that I noticed that stood out immediately for me was what she was saying about her content and saying about how she thought some things were working before, but then it stopped working, and she couldn't figure out what the problem was.
And the things that she was saying in her questionnaire were ver- it, it was very, very obvious to me the amount of pressure that she was putting on herself and on her posts, and because of that pressure, she wasn't enjoying creating content. She wasn't enjoying showing up. She'd almost lost the joy of creating content. And I get for somebody that isn't a marketer, that doesn't do content for a living, when you're a business owner and you have to market your business because that's how you grow it- Even though it's not the thing you're that excited about. I understand that creating content is a stressful thing for a lot of people. I understand it can be confusing and overwhelming, and there's so much advice floating around, and there's algorithms, and new trends every week, and new features every month. It- I completely appreciate it is stressful and overwhelming.
However, it can also be joyful. When you focus on it as this is how I get to talk about the business that I've created to help people, because we all start our businesses for a reason, right? We don't just start a business just for the money. Obviously, we wanna ma- make our own living. Obviously, we wanna earn our own income, something, well, I say something a bit more steady, but it's probably not, not as steady as a nine-to-five. But we want to, we want to work for ourselves for whatever our reasons are.
And I would say for the majority of us, it's not just about that. It's because we have got something that we are passionate about, that we know can help someone, whether it solves a problem, whether it, it improves their life in a certain way, whether it brings them joy or gives them confidence or whatever it is. Your business was designed to help people.
And when you switch the thinking, instead of thinking, "Ugh, I've gotta create content for my business, and I don't know whether this post is gonna work, or what's the hook, or this is so confusing and overwhelming," when you think, "I've got this opportunity to show up and talk about this thing that I love, this thing that I've built, this thing that I'm really passionate about, this thing that I know can change people's lives," creating content becomes a lot easier. When you take that pressure off of yourself, the pressure to make sure you're getting the views, make sure you're getting the likes, make sure you're getting comments, it, it's so much unnecessary pressure for you to be putting on top of yourself, especially when you're probably putting pressure on yourself around all the other areas of your life as well.
Like, are you eating enough fruit and veg? Are you eating, eating enough fibre? When did you last exercise? Like, the washing needs doing. Whatever it is. I imagine if you're like me, which I feel like we are probably quite similar because I tend to a- like, I, I tend to attract, be friends with, like, enter circles with people who are very similar to me. I imagine we're, we're pretty similar. You're putting so much pressure on yourself in all the other areas of your life, pressuring yourself when it comes to creating content isn't something that you need to be doing as well.
Obviously, I went through and then audited her profile. I made suggestions around her photo. I gave her a couple of options for her new bio so that it was more attractive, so that it would att- w- was more about her client rather than about her. I gave her some suggestions for pinned posts to share and how to really update her highlights.
But then one of the biggest things that I feel like she took away, which is some and I know this because she's left me a review, and we had a conversation about it afterwards, was having someone see the pressure she was putting on herself and then giving her permission to stop putting that pressure on herself really shifted the way that she then thought about and approached her content.
And one of the things that I've said numerous times, it really is the Robin Rose Creative philosophy, is the idea that every piece of content you share is a brick, and the effect of that brick compounds over time. And the analogy I always like to give is if you were building your own house, you wouldn't pick up a brick and put all the pressure on this brick to be the one that makes the house secure or to be the one that makes the house sturdy or pretty or be the brick that's gonna be the focal point.
You would treat every single one of the bricks equally, and you would rely on every single one of the bricks equally to build you a solid, sturdy foundation, to build you a solid structure. And over time, the more bricks you lay on top of each other, that has a compounding effect.
So instead of a little wall, instead of like a little two-row height wall, eventually you get this stunning house that was on your vision board. And when we think of it like content, every post is one of those bricks, and over time those posts compound, those posts work together when you are sharing intentionally. If you're putting random shit up here, there, and everywhere because you don't know what to post and you haven't got a strategy behind it, then obviously your house might be a little bit wonky.
But when you are posting intentionally and giving every single one of your posts a purpose, you are going to build that compounding effect so that over time each post works together to build the know, build the like, build the trust, and increase your sales. Those posts are going to work together to help people get to know your business.
So build that brand awareness. Tell people who you are, what you do, what your business does, what services you offer. Gonna help build the like factor so that people can understand whether they like you or not. People don't buy because your content's amazing. People buy because they like you as a person. You could be someone that creates the most viral content in the world, it could be getting millions of saves and likes and comments and follows. You could be getting loads and loads of reach, loads and loads of clicks to your website. But if somebody doesn't like you as a person, they are not going to buy.
And that doesn't mean we're trying to get everybody to like us. We don't want everybody to like us because that's not a realistic ideal to have in our mind. Not everybody is going to like you. What you do wanna do is really show yourself to the people that would benefit from your services, to the people that would relate to you or fit with you or work best with you, to the people that are attracted to you. We wanna bring them in even more and almost like open up a little bit more so that they get to like you on a deeper level, whilst at the same time, by you showing up as yourself, you're repelling anybody who doesn't like you, which is great because you're actively pushing these people out of your world as you're drawing in the people who are your people.
And then the other posts are building that trust, so you're really positioning yourself as an authority. So experience that you've had, client case studies, product reviews, anything showcasing your perspectives, teaching your methodologies, talking about your methods or the way that you do things, anything that really helps people to consider you as the solution to their problem or as the option that they want to purchase.
So not everybody's gotta have a problem, I don't think. I feel like we see this everywhere in marketing, like you have to be the solution to the problem. Like what's the problem you're solving? Sometimes you're not solving a problem. If I see a jumper that I like, that jumper isn't solving a problem for me. It's not... I'm not looking at that jumper going, "Oh, you're going to keep me warm," or, "Oh, you're going to cover my arms in winter," or anything like that. I'm looking at that jumper and going, "Oh, I really like that jumper. That jumper's gonna bring me joy. That jumper's gonna make me confident. That jumper's gonna make me feel good about myself. That's why I want that jumper."
And it's the same with your services. Not... You don't have to think about your services as only a solution to a problem. But the trust pieces are where people are going to make those decisions around are they gonna work with you now, are they gonna save you for the future, or have they made their mind up that you're not their person? In which case, they'll leave your world, which is great because then we've just got the people that we want sticking around for us.
And then obviously we have our sales posts because we're businesses, we have to sell. That is how we grow our businesses. And I also understand, like fully selling was something and still is something that I have always found a little bit icky, a little bit uncomfortable. It makes me nervous. But I think that's just because I equate sales and selling with people that, uh, you know, like the sleazy car salesman kind of thing, like people are always trying to take advantage.
That's, that's kind of the, the mentality that I have had to overcome over and over and over again, and still have to overcome on some days because I also don't wanna be seen as that like icky, sleazy salesman that's just like pushing shit that I don't want. Um, we've completely gone off track here.
So I think what I really wanted this episode to be about was just giving you the permission to take that pressure off of yourself. This is also something that's come up recently. Maybe I'll do a separate episode on this as well. But- Everyone that I have done work for over the last few weeks from the content MOTs, I've also done The Mini Robin, which is the two-week content strategy and plan - it's almost like a taster session of The Robin Intensive. Everyone that I've done these mini services for has come back and said, "This was the permission I needed."
So whether it was the permission to not put the pressure on themselves, the permission to actually stop watering down their voice because they were scared of what people would think, or the permission to show up in a different way even though that might not be the way that everybody else is talking about. The permission to try different things. That has been the resounding theme from everyone that I've been working with at the moment.
So I hope that by listening to this episode I've been able to give you the permission that you need to take the pressure off of yourself and take the pressure off of your content so that moving forward you can feel a lot more confident in what you're doing. I really do encourage you to create a plan of some sort.
I had a conversation with someone recently, which I may or may not have actually already told you, but I had a conversation with someone recently and they said batching doesn't work for them. They find it so easy to show up and post every day. And I was like, "Well, don't batch then," because if you find that easy, that's fantastic. Me personally cannot show up every day. I am currently doing really well at being consistent because I created myself a new plan. And as we've talked about before, I kinda ghosted my Instagram for a couple of months when things went wrong, and at the end of September ... Was it the end of September? No, I think it was the beginning of October. I ... Yeah, beginning of October. I've got my content plan in front of me. I was like, "Okay, I'm not having this anymore. I'm being consistent with my posts again. I'm going back to five posts a week. This is what I'm doing."
And I know for a fact, I know myself well enough to know I need a plan, but I also need to schedule and I need to batch, because I'm not somebody that can stick to this plan on a daily basis. So right now the thing that's really helping me feel more confident in my content is taking the pressure off myself for every post to perform.
If you haven't listened to the last episode, go back and listen to that because I talked about how I'm getting myself out of an Instagram rut. Highly recommend listening to that so that you can understand what I'm doing at the moment. But making that decision to come back, seeing everything as a test, having a very in-depth plan, and this plan is obviously built around my business goals because that is my priority. I've got things that I want to ... I want to start booking out my services for, well, now, November, December, January. I've got sales goals in mind. I've got my business goals. I've got my growth goals. There are certain things that I want to achieve, and my content plan very much reflects that.
But I've got the plan in place, and because I've been batching ahead I've currently got content batched up until the middle of next week, and then when I finish recording this later on I'm gonna schedule a bit, a few more posts. So I'm pretty ahead, and that feels really nice. And because I'm ahead- I'm really, really hoping that I'm gonna be able to maintain this schedule because I'm not trying to rush around and do things on a daily basis.
Obviously, I'm a kind of a bit off schedule with the podcast now, but again, I'm not putting pressure on myself to make sure that I'm keeping up with the podcast, and keeping up with the Instagram content, and doing the client work, and doing the other things behind the scenes that I'm doing, and making sure I'm doing my three workouts a week.
I'm not putting that pressure on myself. I'm giving myself permission to show up in a way that I can show up at the moment based on my capacity, based on what feels good to me, based on what my business goals are, and I'm not pressurising myself.
The podcast has gone out today. Has it gone out at 5:00 AM like my normal schedule? No, it hasn't. Am I gonna spend the day beating myself up? No, I'm not. I could have said, "Oh no, I've failed again this week. I've not got it out. I'm not gonna do it." But I haven't done that. Last week, which you probably wouldn't even notice, last week's podcast episode didn't go out at 5:00, or maybe it did go out at 5:00, but I hadn't written the show notes and I hadn't gotten it on the website until way later on in the day. I don't think I even did it until the evening. So the episode might have gone out, but the stuff surrounding it was late.
And again, I'm not pressurising myself into making sure that I have to stick to things how they are, and that really, removing that pressure is really gonna help you feel a lot more confident in yourself because pressure is really heavy, and I don't think we appreciate how much it can actually affect our mindset. And it also gives you space to find more joy in creating, gives you space to actually focus on creating something good rather than focus on creating something that's gonna get a load of likes.
And I'll tell you something, I created a post the other day. I tell you, it must have taken me, I don't know, like two hours. I think I did it across a couple of days. One of my carousels I created, it had hardly any likes- But it got me the most profile visits and it got me the most saves. And this is something else that I think, again, is worth looking at in your analytics. I looked at my analytics today for the last, did I? I can't remember if I did a year. Oh, no, it was 90 days. For the last 90 days, I looked at my analytics, and the posts with the most likes, none of them were the same as the posts with the most profile visits. Because again, each post has got its own job to do, but that's really key for you to remember that just because somebody hasn't liked your post doesn't mean they're not checking you out, doesn't mean they're not clicking on your website.
So I think I'm gonna leave that there because otherwise I could literally waffle on about this for I don't know how long. If you're interested in The Content MOT, then I will leave a link to it in the show notes, and I'll leave a little clip here of the video that Sarah sent me after her Content MOT so you can hear her feedback and you're not listening to me talk about it. But I'll let you listen to that because it was really, really helpful for her.
And with The Content MOT, you will receive your audit within five working days, and you'll receive it in a PDF report where it lays everything out for you, and then it'll tell you where to focus your attention for the next 90 days when it comes to making the changes from the profile audit. And you'll also receive a video walkthrough where I'll go through the report in a video so that you can go back and watch that as many times as you need to so that you can make the improvements you need to ensure your content is performing the absolute best it can.
When you're sending people to a profile that isn't optimised, you are missing out on leads, you're missing out on enquiries, and you're missing out on sales. So that's why I've got The Content MOT because it's such a valuable service for people who feel like something isn't working but just cannot put your finger on it. And I've heard from two people that I've done a Content MOT for recently, both said that they were too close to their content to be able to see what was wrong with it.
And that's why it can be so helpful to have someone who is completely detached from your business, who isn't emotionally involved, who doesn't know your business, and for them to come in with fresh eyes. And by them, I mean me . For me to come in with fresh eyes and be able to see things from a completely different perspective. And I am actually getting my own content audited with my coach. I've got a profile audit or a social media audit that I got through, um, the membership that I'm part of. I'm gonna be asking for mine soon because I'm also too close to my own content.
So I can look at my content objectively and I know there's things that I need to change about mine because I like to tell other people what to do and then not do it myself. So I'm gonna be updating like my highlights and my own pinned posts, but I know that I'm gonna have my own social media audited because I understand the value of somebody from the outside looking at things with a completely different perspective.
So I'll leave you with Sarah's review. If you wanna book your MOT, then I'll leave the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one and here's what Sarah had to say:
“If you feel like your Instagram has stopped working and you can't figure out why, this is for you. I'm Sarah, I'm a holistic health coach and nutritionist, and that was exactly where I was when I booked a Content MOT with Rebecca from Robin Rose Creative. I was frustrated. I was putting so much pressure on every single post, and I was too close to my own content to see what's, what's going on. Like, hello, information overload.
What I didn't expect was how much care she put into it. Like, she went through everything. She rewrote my bio. She found broken links I didn't even know I had. She broke down exactly how much of my content was selling versus actually connecting with people, and she noticed things I never have seen myself, like my call to action sitting at the top of too many of my captions, so nobody kept reading. You know, I thought it's a good idea, and sometimes maybe it is, but not all the time.
And I've received so many good tips and suggestions from her on how to improve my online presence, especially as I want to create more of a community on my Instagram. But what really got me was she clearly read every word I wrote in my form because she picked up on how, on the pressure I was putting on myself and talked me through it so kindly that it kinda changed how I feel about showing up, so that was already another, like, great thing about the content MOT.
And I ended up walking away with a clear 30 and 90-day plan. I set up my action plan the same week, and for the first time in a while, I actually know what to focus on because really, like, with all the information that is out there, I didn't know anymore what to focus on. So if you're a service provider, a coach, or whatever business you have, and you feel stuck with your content, book Rebecca. You can really tell she cares about getting it right for you.”
The Art of Confident Content is planned, edited and produced by Rebecca at Robin Rose Creative. If you've been thinking about launching your own podcast and want support bringing it to life, email hello@robinrosecreative.com. I would love to hear about your idea and discuss how I can help you with the concept, episode ideation, and launch content.
And when you're finished leaving me a five-star review, don't forget to check out The Robin Intensive. This is done for you content with a twist that will help you post consistently for the next 90 days at least. The link is in the show notes.
Oh, and one last thing. If you made it here, DM me the word gift, that's G-I-F-T, on Instagram because I've got a little something special just for you.
The Art of Confident Content is planned, edited and produced by Rebecca at Robin Rose Creative (that’s me in the pic!). If you've been thinking about launching your own podcast and want support bringing it to life, get in touch here. I'd love to hear about your idea and discuss how I can help you with the concept, episode ideation and launch content.
You’ll find previous podcasts planned, edited and produced by Rebecca here:
