Focus on Creating Better Photos and Videos, Not Growing Your Audience

"If you build it, he will come," or so said "Field of Dreams." It turns out that that might be the philosophy to take with your social media followings and channels. Here's why you should be focusing less on numbers and more on creating.

Coming to you from Travel Feels, this great video essay examines the phenomenon of numbers chasing versus creating worthwhile content. It's common to worry about your Instagram metrics or YouTube followers these days, and there can be a temptation to try to grow those numbers either through artificial means or by pandering to your audience, but that can lead to a very unsatisfying end: even if you're successful, you're now married to creating content that doesn't resonate with your voice so much as adhere to some manufactured formula for pleasing your subscribers. The video argues that one should focus on perfecting their own content, after which subscribers will be drawn to your work for its originality and quality, which I generally agree with. In particular, I think that philosophy creates much more excitement and thereby commitment from your followers, and they'll be more apt to keep a close eye on what you do.