Posting Now, Not Later

Holding back content can sometimes be a great way to ensure maintained, regular, consistent communication.

If you have a surplus of content, it can be good to hold some of it back to use at a later date, for a number of reasons including:

• Keeping the "level" of communication consistent
• Ensuring the frequency of communication is consistent (reducing the risk of lack of time)
• Avoiding blocking the creative process for the purpose of keeping to a schedule
• Enabling better forward planning for the release of content

Why this sometimes doesn't work

It really depends on what you're trying to achieve with a blog or website.

If you are building a community, you will want to ensure there are regular, consistent, heartbeat articles or other comms along with the more significant posts: it keeps people coming back based on consistent expectations.

However, in the case of this blog I am partly doing it for myself. I want to drive myself to reflect and write daily, to improve myself. Whilst I always hope that the articles are of good use to others, I am doing this largely for myself.

As a result, if I am particularly productive on a particular day, I will post the content, even if I could save it to a later day. Some articles will take longer to write anyway, but the shorter ones (like this one), will be posted as soon as I've written them. This way, I will not be tempted to "skip" a day by using content I've written in the past.

Again, the purpose of the "daily rubbish" posts was to ensure I write something, even if it's not particularly high quality - it is to push myself to author content.

Do you hold back content or do you always post it straight away? Which strategy makes the most sense to you?