We’ve all written a post that we didn’t love.
No matter how knowledgeable or experienced you are, you’ll always find something that could be improved—even before hitting the publish button. And over time, you gain expertise, your writing style improves, and your industry changes, so this is especially true when you go back a few months or years and look at some of your older content.
So what should you do when this happens?
I’m of the opinion that “done” is always better than “perfect,” especially since “done” can be achieved while “perfect” cannot, so I suggest hitting that publish button. If you’re still thinking about it in a week, go back and reread it. If you still think it’s worth putting in the time to edit, go for it, but be aware that any time you spend doing this is time you can’t spend producing new content.
Too often, we become our own worst enemies by over-analyzing our work. I have published plenty of posts that I was unsure about—that I wasn’t in love with, and many of them went on to outperform some of my favorite ones.
The mistake most of us, myself included, make is worrying too much about what we think about our content and not enough about what our readers think—and they are the only ones who really matter!
If your readers love a post, does it really make sense to obsess about how it sounds to you, or would you be better off putting your time and energy into producing more content that your readers love?
Get your message out there and don’t worry about trying to make it perfect because you never will—but your readers will always let you know if it’s good enough.