Why “Post Every Day” Is Terrible Advice
How to grow your audience by posting less
“The more I post, the more at bats I have. This means more chances for my content to go viral and my audience to grow.”
I used to believe this. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And I’m going to explain why this popular wisdom is actually hurting your growth.
The Daily Posting Trap
Here’s what happens when you post daily (speaking from painful personal experience):
- You rush to meet self-imposed deadlines
- You publish half-baked ideas
- You optimize for speed, not impact
And most importantly….
- You train yourself to create faster content, not better content
“But wait… If I post more, my quality will improve naturally. I just need to get the reps in!”
This is where most creators get it wrong.
The Quality-Quantity Paradox
Posting daily doesn’t train you to create better content. It trains you to create faster content. There’s a crucial difference.
Let me show you what I mean:
- In December 2023, I was focusing on posting a lot on Medium
- In April, I shifted to focusing primarily on “Viral Validated” content (explained below)
- The result? My views and engagement skyrocketed with fewer posts
The Hidden Advantage of Quality-First
When you focus on creating quality content, you naturally develop speed over time.
The inverse isn’t true.
Think about it like this:
- Quantity focus → Only leads to more mediocre content, faster
- Quality focus → Eventually leads to both quality AND quantity
How to Create Home-Run Content
So how do you shift from quantity to quality? Here’s my two-step approach:
1. Write Daily (But Don’t Post Daily)
You wouldn’t expect a musician to record and release every practice session, right?
That would be insane.
Yet that’s exactly what most writers do when they post everything they write.
Your daily writing is your practice ground.
It’s where you try weird shit.
Test crazy hooks.
Write complete garbage without worrying about judgment. It’s where you find your voice without the pressure of eyes on your work. And those “bad” writing sessions?
They’re actually gold.
Every crappy paragraph teaches you what doesn’t land. Every failed hook shows you what to avoid. Every boring intro pushes you closer to writing killer openings.
Then there are those magical days…
You sit down to write and BOOM — something clicks. A perspective nobody’s talked about. A story that perfectly illustrates your point.
An insight that makes you think, “Damn, this needs to be shared.”
You need both types of days. The garbage and the gold. That’s what practice is.
The magic happens when you:
1. Write religiously
2. Post selectively
This isn’t just theory. Every writer you look up to — the ones crushing it on Medium, Twitter, or wherever — they all have a mountain of unpublished work. Drafts that never saw the light of day. Ideas that died in their notebooks.
That hidden work? That’s their secret weapon. That’s what makes their published pieces hit so damn hard.
2. Follow the Viral Validated Method
Analyze successful content for these five elements that make up all content:
- The big idea
- The framing
- The package (headline, sub-headline, and thumbnail)
- The hook
- The structure
Model that content. It’s proven to work, so no need to reinvent the wheel.
The Real Path to Growth
The path to content success isn’t about maximizing your “at bats.” It’s about maximizing your likelihood of hitting home runs when you step up to the plate.
This means:
- Spending more time validating ideas
- Testing concepts with your audience before full development
- Studying what works (and why it works)
- Being patient enough to develop quality over rushing to post
Stop treating content creation like a numbers game. Start treating it like a craft to be mastered.
Your audience doesn’t want more content. They want better content. Give them that, and the growth will follow.
What’s your experience with daily posting versus focusing on quality? Have you found yourself caught in the quantity trap? Share your thoughts in the responses below.
