People have to see that you’re doing good work before they’ll pay attention to you. But they also have to be able to find your work – no small feat in today’s landscape. So, which is more important? Which should you focus on, quality or quantity? If there is a balance, what should it be?

Rule number one in the content marketing world is: create quality content. Whatever you present, publish, etc. needs to provide value. Rule number two in the content marketing world is: create a lot of that quality content. This makes sense. It’s the ideal, really. But there’s an underlying assumption that anyone who’s creating – in our case writing, blogging, being active on social media, etc. – is capable of creating quality content out of the gate.

Now, maybe you create quality work after quality work, maybe you don’t. If you’re relatively new to this whole writing, blogging, etc. thing, the rules of content marketing might not even apply.

Those rules are tailored to brands that have employees who have been in this game for five, ten plus years. They have a lot of experience, are really good at what they do, and for them it makes sense to have rule number one be focused on quality. For experts, quality isn’t a big deal.

But we’re not all in that world or at that level. In fact, most of us aren’t. Most of us haven’t been writing, blogging, etc. everyday for years and years. So, for everyone who isn’t already an expert, what should you do?

You’re not going to become good at something unless you’re practicing all the time. That could mean, for instance, writing 500 words a day, 2,000 words a day, creating a video everyday, etc. (We all have busy schedules, but if you really want to grow quickly, you need to make time, however little, everyday.) As you create and create and create, your work will become better and better and better.

Along the way, some pieces are going to be better than others, and some are going to be worse than others. But your ability to create quality work will gradually improve, as will your standards of what counts as quality. Think of it like the stock market. Some years are really good. Some years are really bad. Over time there’s always growth.

This is where you can find a balance – if you want to call it a balance – between quality and quantity. One begets the other. You have to have quantity to achieve quality.