The algorithms and the Joneses

We’re closing in on two years now since I got more serious and consistent about posting on YouTube.

When I decided to do that, the goal was simple; help people in the community by sharing the things I’ve learned, and (hopefully) attract new, amazing people to the community.

It didn’t take long for me to start hitting those goals. I knew because I was getting wonderful comments on every video and people asking to join the group saying they found it on YouTube.

Beyond that, unintentionally, YouTube became my biggest source of leads for my agency even though I never — not once — solicited my agency on the channel (that goes to show you how much of a cheat code content marketing is for building recognition and trust — but I digress).

With it being successful beyond my expectations, I’ve continued a 1-ish video per week pace for nearly two years now. But recently something shifted…

Over the past few months I’ve noticed myself checking my YouTube Studio dashboard more frequently… carefully counting the number of views, the watch time, the likes, and the subscribers. Sadly those numbers haven’t grown as fast as I would have liked and it’s bothered me enough its started to discourage me from even posting.

But here’s the thing… Those metrics — the ones YouTube cares about — were never really part of my mission. YouTube might care about likes and watch time, but those things aren’t what motivated me to create videos, nor are they what gives me fulfillment.

This realization — measuring what matters — has hit me hard. It’s made me start looking around at other areas of my business and questioning why I’m measuring what I’m measuring.

Social media makes it easy to get caught up in playing someone else’s game. Sometimes that’s comparing ourselves and our success to others — but too often, it’s measuring ourselves against an algorithm purpose-built to keep us creating free content to feed their machine.

But are those the things that actually fulfill us?

As we wind down 2023 and gear up for 2024, will we measure our success by keeping up with the algorithms and Joneses? Or will we hone in on the metrics that really matter? The things that make a real, tangible difference in our lives and the lives of our family…

I’d be willing to bet that our success is somewhere down the path we carve for ourselves, not in the footsteps we’re told to follow.