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The content you are most proud of, doesn't always get the most hits.
Whatever your platform... Instagram, your blog, YouTube... this tends to apply to it all. I've created videos I've absolutely loved and written posts I thought would do really well, only for them to flop. Then, I've posted things that I've put little effort into, which I thought were complete rubbish, that have gotten a host of views and positive feedback. No matter how much I've tried to make sense of it, I just can't figure it out. Was it the time I posted? The hashtags I used? Was it the formula? Nope, nothing seems to fit. It's a combination of all these things really but it mostly just comes together over luck.
People value different things & interpret things in different ways
See, to one person grammar might be so important that they'll refuse to read a blog if they spot more than one spelling mistake, no matter how great everything else is. Another person might not care at all about that. Do you ever do that thing? You know, that one where you get super annoyed if a person just looks at your images and doesn't actually read the post? Well, that's just personal preference really. Some people might hate reading but love your photography. If you make videos, that's a really subjective one. I always cringe reading my YouTube comments because people always seem to pick up on things or interpret things in ways I didn't intend.
Technical quality vs creativity and breaking the rules
Well, here's another debate. Does good quality mean sticking to a socially acceptable formulae that you learnt in university or does it mean trying something new, even though it might be a bit wacky and different? Does the person with the most expensive camera take the best photographs or can someone using their iPhone be just as good?
Quality vs Quantity
Does creating less content necessarily ensure you will have better quality content? I really don't think it does. That's the thing about doing anything creative. You might produce 1,000 things and have one of those be a big hit. Then again, it might not have had the same success if you only produced that one thing to begin with. That's because everything is so subjective and there's so much luck involved. You have to be constantly practicing your art to get any good at it and you rarely know yourself what people will like and what they'll be 'meh' to. Also, sometimes you have to create a million ideas before you land on one that clicks.
You don't always need people to love your content
Obviously it's nice to be liked but people don't just engage with things they love, they might watch it because they hate it or because they think it's gross. Basically, you want people to have some kind of emotional response to your work and not just be indifferent. Also, things aren't always an instant success. A video you create today might have 100 views, then sometime next year it could balloon to 10,000 so it's worth resisting that urge to delete something if it doesn't get enough views and likes to begin with.
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