Field note 03 · the third problem · Field Notes
Why does nothing change when we post?
Because the story outside is only as strong as the story inside, and the story inside has not been agreed. Content cannot broadcast a decision that has not been made.
What it looks like.
A post every week, sometimes two. A designer or an agency or the owner's nephew making it look tidy. Likes from staff and friends. Enquiries: the same as before. The owner concludes that content does not work for businesses like theirs, or that the algorithm is against them, or that they need to post more. None of those is the finding.
What the posts are actually saying.
Look at the last ten posts as a stranger. Not as the owner, who knows what was meant. As someone who has never heard of the business. Most of the time they say ten slightly different things, because each was written on the day about whatever was happening. Ten different things, repeated weekly, add up to nothing a customer can remember, let alone repeat to a colleague.
The tell.
When did a customer last repeat your marketing back to you in their own words? If the answer is "never", the posts are not landing, and it is not because of the posting. It is because there is no single sentence for them to land on.
Why more posting makes it worse.
Volume amplifies whatever the message is. If the message is a blur, more posts make a bigger blur, faster, at more cost. This is the reason the Grow step comes last in the way we work, and why campaigns come last inside it. Paid reach multiplies. We do not switch it on until there is something worth multiplying.
What fixes it.
Not a content calendar. A decision. What the business is, for whom, and why it is the one to call, written down and agreed inside before anything goes outside. Then content, film and campaigns that all say that one thing in different ways, made by someone who knows how to make a stranger feel it. That is Albie's work, and it waits, deliberately, for the diagnosis.
Two questions this raises.
- Should we stop posting until the story is decided?
- Posting less is usually the right call. Posting nothing for a month costs almost nothing. Posting a blur for a year costs a great deal.
- How do we know the story has landed?
- A customer says it back to you, unprompted, in words close to yours. Until that happens, keep the volume down and the decision sharp.
If this is your business, the audit starts here.
Half a day, both of us, your numbers. A written diagnosis that says whether this is the problem, and what to fix first.
Start a Signal Audit