I think a lot of business owners have accepted that in today’s climate, most of us have to produce online content.

We do this to remain top of mind with clients, and to seek out potential customers.

If we don’t do this, our social media assets and online accounts would be boring and irrelevant.

The only thing we would put up would be company and product news, features, and updates. This would not be inspiring for our potential customers to interact and engage with.

Unfortunately lots of people assume that to produce great content online, it has to have high production value.

What does high production value mean?

It means that the content produced is glossy, well executed, and very professional.

When it comes to traditional media, the goal ACTUALLY should be for your content to have high production value.

It would be a shame to put out an advertisement over the TV that was not well produced, not well written, or scripted.

It would also be a shame to put out bad material over the radio that had poor voice talent and acting.

In both cases it wold also be bad if both didn’t have well thought out points or “calls to action” in the material.

A call to action is the “next step” we want our clients to take whenever we put out content.

When producing content for social media or new media, the landscape is more forgiving.

Because of that, things don’t have to be executed with such high professional flourish and precision... especially in situations where the business owner, or members of the staff are going to be engaging with the audience routinely.

Let’s assume a customer has an inquiry about an order and he sends you guys a direct message over on Instagram.

It would be OK that a member of staff responds with a video that was helpful and relevant, even if that video wasn’t shot with the latest iPhone or the greatest camera.

The customer also would not be bothered if the aspect ratio of the video was off, or if the video was framed or composed wrongly.

So content is important but not all of us have to prioritize delivering it in the same way.

So when it comes to producing content, what should we be aiming for?

Our first priority should be that the message is relevant, helpful, insightful, and should allow the potential customer to enter into deeper relationships with us. Content that helps potential customers in exploring our products or services is cool too!

Secondly, we should be worried about reducing “friction” in the content creation process.

Because creating content can be a very hard thing to do, sometimes insisting on high production value is something that can make the job even harder.

If the job of producing content gets hard enough, most of us won’t bother to continue with writing blog posts, recording podcasts, uploading photos to instagram, or hooking up videos on TikTok, reels, or YouTube.

High production value is expensive in time and effort. That is the friction most of us will have to face in producing or curating content for our social media handles.

Curation is when you don’t product the content yourself, but you find interesting things other people have created that you can share to engage your audience.

If you want high production value, you have to take the time out to do everything yourself to a very high standard, or you have to pay professionals to give the polish to your written, or visual content.

In other words, high production value or “friction” means either hours of your time, or hiring professional photographers, videographers, graphic designers, and other kinds of visual artists.

That might also mean even professional editors or staff writers... or for regular folks like us, hiring social media managers, or content production services.

If you focus on reducing the amount of friction to creating good content, then you’re going to be able to put out content much more easily and predictably over time.

When you start producing content for your business, the focus should be on being consistent and really helpful to your audience.

We can worry about high production value later.

This is especially true when we have the resources to hire the production team that will go behind making such super, high polished, and glossy content.

For now in the early days, it’s more important to show up consistently even if your content is “average” but helpful.

You will get more mileage with your business if you do this rather than producing “professional” content that you release 2 or 3 times a year.