The Frequency Fallacy

Give them content! Give it to them often! That is the mantra of our modern-day marketeers and internet gurus.

Give them content and keep it coming; daily, weekly, monthly or even hourly. Pay me and I’ll make sure you get the rhythm right for your “audience”. Time and time again we bloggers , ESL teachers, singers, rappers, entertainers, etc… are told to keep the content coming relentlessly and we do. We keep churning it out. I’m afraid that our followers, fans or whatever locution your marketeer has sold to you, are not digesting all these posts. It’s time to entertain another possibility concerning the frequency of our posts.

What if they are wrong? What if churning it out is exactly what we should not be doing?

I have come to believe that we are all suffering from a serious case of information overload and “churning it out” isn’t helping matters at all. On the contrary our fans or “insert moniker here” are struggling to keep up. The constant posts on instagram, twitter and other social media platforms is fueling the meltdown. Not only are we being bombarded by posts from some of our most beloved artists and news outlets, but they are now competing with posts from some of our closest friends. Thank God the instagram models have become relatively quiet. There seems to be an endless stream of information. Social media “specialists” argue that it’s necessary to keep your audience interested. But in my most humble opinion therein lies the fallacy. We risk becoming guests on users devices that simply won’t leave. We risk becoming easy to mute and ignore. So when you finally have something to say, it gets lost in your daily updates. After all we are competing with covid updates and messages from friends and family that haven’t been seen for quite some time. Our rush to fill a void might just be creating a void. Now that grandma has finally learned how to use the smart phone a message from her is buried beneath the avalanche of posts, tweets, and messages from celebs.

When my favorite blogger, artist, speaker, posts too often, in my opinion everyday is too often, I become bored. The posts seem predictable and don’t get my attention. That is to say, they don’t get my complete attention. After all, I just heard from them a day or so ago. In fact it could have been just few hours.

I can feel the gurus cringe. Your audience needs to hear from you! Keeping your audience interested and staying relevant means, “post , post, post!”

And when you are done, post something. Or the “influencers” will resort to ridicule their weapon of choice.

It’s not that I have anything against engaging one’s fan base through social networks. I simply have issue with the frequency. Every encounter that I have with a marketeer inevitably starts and ends with the maketeer holding a diatribe on how one will lose tons of money and fans if one fails to post regularly. The recommended frequency rate varies from one marketeer to the next. However, there seems to be a general consensus that if you don’t engage your followers on a weekly basis as the bare minimum, you will lose them. According to the marketeers, your fans are not as interested in your products or services as they are in your posts on social media.

I blog sporadically. I write when time allows or I am moved to do so. If I have lost a student because of my absence on social media, I respectfully do not apologize.

I somehow hope that my readers, fans, students, followers, have better things to do than be bothered by me on a daily basis. I remain open and available for meaningful communication. When I have something to communicate, I communicate it. d

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any problems with some consistency in the social-media posting game.

It’s just that at the moment if you chose to “follow” anybody, you will be bombarded with posts. The only way to avoid this is to keep the amount of celebs and the like that you follow to a bare minimum.

I might be wrong but I don’t think that I am. In fact after the current covid restrictions are lifted I think people will be more than happy to use the phones and tablets a little less. I believe that people will want to hear a little less from people like me and they will want to live a little more. Well that’s my hope anyway. I know that a blog post is a strange place to encounter this type of sentiment but I’m guessing it will resonate with most readers even if it doesn’t with the marketeers. I’m looking forward to the day when the phones and tablets will be used to convey these two messages: When do we meet? Where do we meet?

Until then I will keep getting my marketing wrong and posting exactly what I think at my own pace.