A Realistic Guide to Staying Consistent on Social Media

We're three weeks into January, and let's face it – those New Year's resolutions might be losing their shine. I had a ton of skincare on my 2024 vision board, yet I've done my full skincare routine like, three times this year? 

Consistency is the key to success and achieving your goals, one little daily habit at a time. We all know this, and when it comes to social media, the answer to many questions is just “consistency.” Consistency drives growth. Consistency builds community. Post to your feed consistently and everything will be ~magically resolved.~ 

But as a neurodivergent, depressed girlie, I struggle with consistency a lot. 

And while it's easy for people to dish out the advice and say “just post consistently,” it's not so easy to actually do that. The reality is, in order to consistently churn out quality content, you need to have a solid workflow and systems in place first. Especially if you want to be consistent in the long run and not burn out after a couple weeks and end up just giving up because you feel like a failure. 

So, in the spirit of keeping things steady, I'm sharing a few tips on how you can be more consistent this year. And if you're wondering why you should take advice from someone who struggles with consistency instead of someone who excels at it? 

Well, I like to think I have a pretty solid understanding of the blockers and barriers you'll come up against, and I have tried sooo many different approaches, so these are the solutions that have actually worked for me. 

Use these tips to stay consistent on social and watch your numbers grow in 2024! 

Tip 1: Measure and Reflect

 “You can't improve what you don't measure” – this applies to any type of goal. So first things first, if you want to post more consistently on social this year, you need to set a specific goal. Maybe it's posting to stories every day, and posting to your feed 4x/week. Whatever it is, you need to attach a specific number to your goal! 

Then, you need to measure it. Just like you would use a daily habit tracker to track how much water you drank each day, check off when you post to your stories every day, and log how many times you posted to your feed each week.

Next, you need to schedule time to analyze your success. A weekly check in on Monday mornings and a monthly review that pops up in your calendar is a great way to keep your goals top of mind so you don't give up on them halfway through the year. 

Measuring your progress is the secret to staying consistent: over time, you'll be able to see patterns that emerge that are stopping you from being consistent, and you can work to find solutions to overcome those problems.

 So whatever your goal is, schedule a weekly check in for Monday mornings and a monthly review now. Even if you fall off the consistency train during the week or month, you can use these check ins as a blank slate to start again. And by keeping your goal top of mind, even if you're not 100% all the time, you'll still be better off than if you weren't tracking it! 

P.S. my new Content Calendar Template has a consistency tracker built right into it → so you can track your posting habits, measure your progress each week, and get an overall consistency average. Stay tuned  

Tip 2: Start Small with Milestones

 Anyone else have a tendency to be overly ambitious with their goals? If you have a goal to post 4x/week to your feed, but you're only posting once a week right now, that's a big jump to make overnight! 

Goals are great, but don't go overboard! Keep it simple and realistic, and work backwards from your goal by setting milestones to achieve. For example, for the first month you could post to your feed 2x/week, and work your way up month-by-month until you reach your 4x/week goal.  

You can see below how I've created milestones leading up to my goal of having 20k newsletter subscribers by end of 2024:

If your planning is overly ambitious, you're likely to become frustrated when tasks pile up and deadlines are missed. This can only create a burnout cycle, but it can also cause you to feel like a failure, so you just give up because you're frustrated at how far behind you are. But you're not a failure, you just need to improve your planning! 

Strike a balance by setting achievable milestones that align with your existing schedule. Each time you achieve a milestone you'll feel accomplished, and by slowly increasing the amount of content you create you'll be able to create a scalable, sustainable workflow for the long term. 

Tip 3: List All Tasks & Schedule Buffer Room

I am famous for announcing launch dates prematurely and then always having to push them back. Time blindness is a real thing, and because of my ADHD I struggle with estimating just how long something is actually going to take me to complete. 

The #1 thing that's helped me is listing out every single task that needs to get done for a project or post. Only when I have that long list of tasks in front of me do I realize exactly how much work needs to get done before I can publish a piece of content or launch something new. 

To prioritize your mental health while creating your content calendar and weekly plan, set both “do” dates and due dates. 'Do' dates are common in many Notion templates, and they essentially act as the date that you plan to actually do something.

 By assigning each task a 'do' date, you'll be able to look at your schedule for each day and see if you have a manageable workload of 'do' tasks - or if realistically, you need to push back your publish date a day or two.

Set your “do” date at least one day before you actually need to complete the task. This approach acts as a buffer, allowing for the flexibility of low-energy days. By giving yourself a cushion, you can navigate the challenges of maintaining consistency without compromising your well-being. 

Tip 4: Create a Workflow that Works for YOU

I'm more of an intuitive worker, so I don't like to have every minute of every day scheduled. But one thing I do schedule is a consistent day each week for filming - I know that every Wednesday is filming day, so I don't book meetings and I plan my social/workout/hair wash calendar around being camera-ready for Wednesdays. 

You want to get into a good flow with content creation, and one of the most efficient ways to do this is by batching your tasks. Trying to script, film, edit, and post a Reel/TikTok every single day is not only exhausting, it's also a waste of your energy and time. 

Instead, try to work in batches based on your 'do' dates or energy level. Script all your videos for the week at once, block out time in your calendar to film a bunch of videos at once, and then when you feel like staying in your sweats all day, edit everything at once while you're cozy on the couch. 

For me, this looks like: 

Mondays: plan, research, & script content (3 hrs) 
Wednesday: film (4 hrs) 

And then the rest is flex time for working on my business, and I give myself the option to edit on Thursday or Friday depending on my energy level. Make your content workflow work for YOU and your own schedule, and then plan your tasks and content calendar around that. 

Uterus Bonus: Sync with Your Cycle – Work Smarter, Not Harder

If you menstruate, I highly recommend syncing your workflow with your menstrual cycle. Because I use a period app to track all the symptoms of my menstrual cycle (this goes back to Tip #1) I was able to notice a pattern where I loved filming in my follicular phase, but I hated editing in my follicular phase because I felt so creative and energetic and didn't want to just sit down and edit all day. 

But I love editing in my luteal phase because I'm PMSing and can just stay in bed editing with a hot water bottle.  Now, it's not very realistic to do this for your entire content calendar, but you can try to sync your cycle up with your content cal the best you can. 
 

Your workflow, your rules – period. (lol) 

And if you're looking for more ways to stay consistent this year and achieve your goals, my new Content Calendar & Planner Template for Notion is coming **very** soon, and it has a ton of built-in features to help you track and improve your consistency!