How Focusing on Numbers Can Hurt Your Content

Why likes, followers, dollars, and other numbers cannot be the end goal.

Content creation is wonderful: We create value for others, and in turn, we create values for ourselves, including satisfaction, learning, heightened self-esteem, income, and more.

But we can lose sight of this core purpose of content creation—to create value—when we focus too heavily on numbers (likes, follows, dollars, etc).

This isn’t unique to content creation. Early in my sales career, my job required me to hit a daily “call goal” of thirty phone calls. Because I love efficiency, I optimized for hitting that number as early in the day as possible so I could move on to other things.

However, I cut corners. I ended conversations with prospects too soon, hung up the phone mid-ring, and purposefully called phone numbers I knew no one would answer. All of these strategies did help me make thirty calls in less than an hour, but they didn’t help me achieve my true goal: to create value for prospects and, in turn, myself. My paychecks and morale shrank.

Numbers are valuable because they help us reach our end goal—valuable content. They do this in a few ways.

Numbers signal what to contribute next to the marketplace of ideas. Likes, followers, and dollars are measures that say, “Hey, people care—or don’t care—about this.” This tells us what content is and isn’t resonating with people and where to allocate our limited time.

Numbers are also valuable because they make creating content sustainable and impactful. If your content doesn’t generate enough income, you may be unable to balance content creation with your job. And if you have a tiny audience, your content won’t impact many people and advertisers won’t be convinced you’re worth investing in. Income and audience numbers support your content.

But numbers are not the end goal themselves.

What makes content valuable to consumers is its ability to serve their needs, solve their problems, and ultimately, better their lives. Numbers are merely signals or supports. But if we make numbers the aim, we can justify cutting corners (as I did in sales): buying bot-followers, hosting “giveaways,” begging larger accounts to repost your stuff, and using other gimmicky tactics. All of these things undercut the true goal.

Don’t cut corners for numbers. Create quality content first and use numbers as signals and supports.