It can be hard to know what to post.

You might spend a good portion of your day thinking about what to post. The answer almost never reveals itself clearly. There’s a time for experimentation and there’s a time for the ideas to flow more naturally.

And here’s when it gets hard: when you post something you feel generally neutral about, and it goes viral. Has this happened to you? Perhaps you haven’t gone “viral” yet, but maybe you’ve posted something that received high engagement and it left you feeling perplexed as to why. It’s confusing to receive loads of positive reinforcement on a post that doesn’t necessarily align with your values or desires. It may appear like a good thing, but the validation doesn’t help in the long run. It’s valuable to know what resonates with your audience, but not at the expense of your values.

Just because something gets a lot of likes, doesn’t mean you should post it.

I can speak from personal experience. I used to post content about my dates, mainly because I saw other creators do it. These creators shared intimate details of their dates, divulging what he did or said, and I found myself intrigued. I thought that if I was intrigued, I should post my own dating experiences. But every time I would do this, I noticed something was off. I would get anxious. I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking about it. I argued with myself that it was okay to post, that I was helping others navigate their dating life, that it was helpful information. But at the end of the day, something about it didn’t sit right. I finally determined that I don’t like using my platform to talk about other people: anything that falls under the category of gossip doesn’t feel like a good use of my time.

Someone once asked me: What do you want to share with others and what do you want to keep for yourself?

At the time, I was letting my words spill out onto the page without any consideration for my privacy or digital wellbeing. And there were times where I felt violated because of this. There were times when I spoke on things I didn’t feel comfortable sharing an opinion on. But I did it anyway because I thought I had to, because I was addicted to the attention I was receiving. I got 20k likes on a TikTok video about my very intimate date and I wanted more of that same feeling. It’s so easy to get confused and lose your way when people are throwing validation at you, when people are telling you, “Yes, I like you.” “Yes, I agree with you.” “Yes, you are so beautiful.” Do you know what that feels like? It’s like a drug. You get an emotional high when your posts hit a responsive chord with your audience, so you keep going after it, but you're never fulfilled. That’s why it’s important to keep likes/comments out of the picture when deciding what to post. As much as it feels like a good indication of your success, it truly isn’t the metric to which we should be evaluating the success of our content.

How do you define success with content creation?

Only you can determine that for yourself. But I can tell you that for me, it feels like excitement. It’s this feeling of being aligned. It’s the feeling of watching a video over again, and thinking to myself, “Wow, I love this and I am so proud of this.” I know something is true to me, when I don’t feel the need to ask anyone what they think about it before I post. I love that feeling. I know that feeling. And it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes, I work on things for hours at a time, and nothing fruitful comes from it. But I can still be proud of myself for working hard on it.

How to determine what to post

Go to your values, look at your values. We help our students determine their values during Week 2 of PBA. Right now, mine are balance, beauty, and patience. When I look at my values I see a few things. The word beauty is an indication of how I want my content to feel. I always want things to feel beautiful and intentional. When I see the word balance it makes me want to  find it between educational, personal, and entertaining. I’ve been leaning towards one style of content, and I want to focus on the other areas now. When I see the word patience, what stands out to me is slow, intentional living. I can’t go faster than what I can physically produce, and I want to put out good work. I want to stay consistent, but I also want to go at a healthy pace that allows me to deliver quality work I can be proud of. For me, I know that takes patience. I also know that it isn’t going to happen overnight.

When you know what you value, you can use those values to direct you on what to post, in what style to post, and the cadence for how often you should be posting. What are your values? Tell me in the comments below.