Why be consistent?

If you’ve been around marketing for the past few decades, you’ll have heard the phrase — consistency matters. But have you ever wondered why?

I didn’t post last week, and because of that, I’ll have fewer readers for this post. Further, I broke the trust that took me weeks to establish. The analogy: “it takes a tree ten years to grow and only 10 minutes to cut down” is in full effect.

But it goes beyond those metrics.

Not posting last week made it easier for me not to post this week. And, once I’ve missed a few times, there is a high likelihood I’ll abandon the pursuit all together.

Any opportunity that I had to leverage what was happening last week is gone. Timely and topical posts must be — well, you guessed it — timely and topical.

Further, I lost the chance to practice. Ask any great athlete or thinker about their habits, and one thing that almost always comes out is their commitment to practice — to working on their craft.

Most of all, I didn’t honour the attention you, the reader, gave to me. As mentioned above, this causes a loss of trust, credibility, and reciprocity.

Few things can cause as much damage. And while I’ll hopefully recover — businesses that are inconsistent rarely rebound.