Like you, I think a lot about AI and how it’s going to change my work. There are few industries that AI has disrupted as much as content writing or content producing of any kind.
In the past year, I’ve never had a strategy session where I wasn’t asked about content volume: how much do I need to publish? How can I make the process more efficient?
So today, we’re answering the volume question. Plus, I’ll show you a way to figure out if you have to play the volume game or not.
But first, a spoiler in the form of a message from today’s partner, someone who doesn’t publish a lot, but everything I read in his newsletter has been exceptional. So I’m beyond stoked to feature a brilliant thinker whose work is nothing short of impressive.
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Does volume still matter?
I had an interesting chat with my friends Hannah Szabo and Michael Scott Overholt on this topic. It all started with this snippet of Jay Clouse’s newsletter:
Everyone’s drowning in content — and most of it is AI-generated these days. I echo Jay’s sentiment: volume is no longer a differentiator.
Until the end of 2022, everyone was thinking about how many blog posts/social media posts/whitepapers they could publish while still maintaining quality.
It was a matter of bandwidth and budget — whether you outsourced content creation or produced it in-house, it came with a cost.
After AI came into play, the cost dropped to cents per asset. Now, we can all produce hundreds, even thousands, of pieces of content for mere dollars.
And still, I don’t think volume is completely irrelevant.
To answer Jay’s rhetorical question (what else matters when volume is no longer a differentiator), I’d wager on two things:
- Trust
- Depth
This is why I think that newsletters like Idea Sled are poised to win in the long run: they have a unique POV, depth, and trust-generating potential. Anyone can regurgitate advice from celeb entrepreneurs with AI, but very few people have a BIG idea of their own, like Christopher Fox does.
Still,
How much content you need depends on what stage your business is in
Someone like Jay Clouse, who has a large and very engaged audience, can afford to dial down on content production and go deeper, not broader. A very engaged audience means that you can make scarcity work for you — you can create one in-depth asset per week (even more rarely) because you know your audience will share it.
When you have a large audience, everything you say gets amplified organically.
When you don’t, you’re both the content producer and its marketer.
This is why I keep nagging you to invest in audience growth as much as possible — so that you can eventually work less on producing and distributing content.
So, if your audience is small (think less than 10,000 engaged followers/subscribers on any platform), does it mean that you need to publish insane amounts of content to get ahead?
No, not insane, but you DO have to publish more.
The Matthew Effect says that the more you publish, the better your chances of success. Authors like Isabel Allende and Stephen King are perfect examples here.
[Dig deeper into why volume matters for everything, not justy content.]
An overly simplified approach to the content volume you need
- With an engaged audience → publish less.
- Without an engaged audience that actively shares your content → publish more.
I call this “overly simplified” because volume lives on a spectrum; it’s not a binary choice. “Less” and “more” mean different things to different people.
Let’s look at two people who are on different ends of this spectrum:
Esther Perel vs Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi essentially brute-forced his way to fame. He published insane amounts of content everywhere: every social media platform, blog, newsletter, podcasts, YouTube — he was everywhere, posting multiple times a day, every day. He published so much that algorithms had no choice but to push his content to more people.
He still has a massive online presence even though it’s not as big as it used to be. These days, thanks to his huge library of content and equally huge audience, he can rely on repurposing and on his audience to amplify his voice.
Personally (a personal choice, not a rule!), this is not a game I want to play because it invariably leads to publishing inane crap and motivational drivel.
At the other end of the spectrum, Esther Perel (THE voice on modern relationships) churns out much, much less content — she has never published as much as Alex Hormozi. I featured her as the prime example in The Resonance Principle manifesto because I believe that this is how enduring influence can be created.
For Esther Perel, it all started with her IP (Intellectual Property). She spent decades in her therapist’s office setting the stage and learning about modern relationships and their challenges.
When she took the stage (read: became an online personality), she already had such an impressive BIG idea that people paid attention immediately. This foundational work allowed her to build an audience that trusted her almost instantly.
Depth leads to trust, always.
But that doesn’t mean that Esther Perel didn’t publish a lot of content in the early stages of building her public persona. She still needed to attract more people in her universe, so she, too, played the volume game (on a different scale than Alex Hormozi, though).
Right now, most of her content is clips from podcasts/conferences she’s been speaking at and very, very little stuff she/her team produce(s) on their own.
The content playbook I live by:
Do solid work → develop your own IP → turn it into sound bites → disseminate at scale.
The downside is that it takes time — a lot of it. Screaming into a microphone and posting it on all social media platforms works much faster. But it’s also easier to lose.
But, make no mistake, you still need a respectable volume of content.
- In the early stages of your business, you need volume to attract attention.
- Later on, you need it to retain attention.
How much content is enough content?
If you’re in the same league as Jay Clouse or further on, like Alex Hormozi and Esther Perel, you can set your own rules. Alternate between depth and volume as you see fit.
If you’re earlier, though, here’s what I suggest:
- Daily content on two social media platforms (-ish, you can, of course, take breaks)
- Weekly content on a platform you own, like a newsletter.
Assuming that you have a solid BIG idea and a content engine, this should be more than doable even without AI. And it should be enough for you to get attention (social media) and then retain it (platform you control).
Use this as a starting point, not something to live by until you build a fanocracy. For instance, if you’re in an audience building season, you can publish more. If you’re in a revenue growth season, publish less so you can focus on selling.
One last word of caution: whether you choose to play the volume game or not, standing out is harder than ever. So, whether you use AI or not, make sure you’re also playing the resonance game.
No amount of content can save you from a lack of trust.
