Consistency is Key

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this…

… but I’m a huge Casey Neistat fan.

Now before you shake your head and click away, I was a fan of Casey years before his vlogging days.

His borderline-genius talent for storytelling captivated me from the first few frames I saw of his work.

Stop reading my article now and go to YouTube and watch “Office Exercise”, “two dollar bills” or “NYC soda ban expalined, sort of” and I’ve no doubt that you too will be able to appreciate the rare gift that Casey has for filmmkaing.

Even before pressing record for his very first vlog he’d reached a level of success many of us filmmakers can only dream of. However it wasn’t until he started daily vlogging that he climbed to the far greater level of success he is now achieved.

When Casey started vlogging, slowly but surely heading to YouTube to watch Casey’s latest video became a part of my daily routine.

Like most viewers, I was entertained and inspired by the way he leads his life.

But as a filmmaker I lived for the episodes where he shared candid and unfiltered opinion, thought and practical technique he used in his day to day work.

Although I can’t pretend for a second that I’m on a level even remotely close to Casey right now, the way he shared his learnings and experiences have been a major inspiration for this blog. I hope in the way that he inspires creators like myself, in some small way this collection of words I write each week will at some point in time, be a help for someone starting their journey.

Throughout his first stint of daily vlogging Casey managed to post a daily video for over 550 days in a row.

Casey’s success was due in large part to his incredible work ethic, talent and entertaining personality. However the consistency in filming, editing and uploading a new video every single day (weekends included) during the so called ‘experiment’ that was his original daily vlog, was perhaps in many ways the most important factor.

This was the first time that I truly realised how a posting schedule, which gave your audience a reason to come back to your page every day and see what was new, was a huge factor behind growing a successful audience.

“Just Keep Uploading*” is a mantra Casey embodied from a fellow YouTube star Roman Atwood.

*Contained in this statment is a very important sub-text that speed is more important than perfection (that’s a Gary Vayernchuk thought), I’ll talk more about this in a future blog.

As filmmakers we all want every one of our projects to be incredible.

If like me you do a lot of work for a range of different clients, there’s the added pressure of wanting to make sure every time they hire you, you’re delivering the best work you can possibly do.

With any creative endeavour the dream is always to turn up to the project well rested, with lots of new inspirations and ideas in your head and ready to create something truly special.

Spoiler alert, this job isn’t like that at all.

As filmmakers I’m sure we can all think to back when we first fell in love with video production and we’d spend days, even weeks on a video, making sure everything was absolutely perfect.

But as soon as you get in to the industry, that goes out the window.

It doesn’t matter if you were shooting until 1AM the day before, or if you’ve only got 10 minutes with your talent when you need an hour.

You’ve got to get the job done. And it’s got to be good.

Many of the professionals I aspire to be like in this industry are ones who can turn up, think on their feet and make something amazing.

To me, the most succesful content creators seem to be the ones who are most consistent in both the quality of their content and their upload schedule.

My intuition says that being able to turn up and consistently deliver great quality work, whether you’re working for a client or producing content for your own business or channels, is hugely important in today’s media landscape.

So remember, consistency is key.

I wish you every success.
Jack

I’m currently reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book “Crushing It’”, it’s a great one! Check it out here… https://amzn.to/2t13pmR)