Are your standards unreasonable?

What do you suppose ultimately does your business more good: kick-ass, intermittent marketing, or good marketing done regularly and strategically? (Hint: The answer is behind Door Number Two.)

Yet I suspect many entrepreneurs shoot themselves in the marketing foot by being unwilling to intentionally, relentlessly, consistently put their marketing message out there on the grounds that some of the communications just “aren’t good enough.”

This forcibly brings to mind the observation by hockey great Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Consider something as seemingly straightforward as writing a blog post. You look at your content calendar, choose an appropriate topic, and share your expertise in writing. What could be simpler?

Except it’s not.

Maybe your content calendar is too broad to be actionable. Maybe it’s nonexistent. Maybe you have the topic idea but it’s accompanied by a major case of blank-page paralysis. Maybe writing is a high-intensity activity for you, and your energy is at low ebb today. Maybe what you really want to do is take a nap.

Any or all of the above – not to mention a slew of other considerations – can make it easy to tell yourself, “I’d rather not write a blog post at all, rather than write one that’s lousy.” And that’s a very useful awareness to have – if you don’t use it as justification to do nothing.

Take action. Even if it’s only baby steps.

What if you give yourself permission to write something that’s good, even if it’s not your very best work? To write something shorter than your usual blog post, but no less packed with insights, tips, tools, or whatever else your readers expect from you? To take a baby step and give yourself credit for having done so, even though it wasn’t the giant stride you might have envisioned?

What if some good material provided consistently is, in the end, more valuable to your clients – and you – than a brain-dump of great material once in a blue moon?

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What are some of the ways you deal with the challenge of consistent and purposeful activity? Please share in the comments below; any strategies and tactics are welcome!

(Thanks to leo gonzales for posting his “perfect” image in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)

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