You’re consistent, relevant and yet forgettable
On developing the creative judgement that makes you irreplaceable and why the algorithm has been working against it
You are a creator that from the outside looks very productive. You are posting consistently, jumping on viral trends, studying the algorithm and adjusting your content accordingly. Your numbers look great and your growth is steady but then you end up realizing that you sound like everybody else. Most creators get to this point because that’s what the algorithm rewards in the short term. But what takes a long-term approach to making you unforgettable is the ability to know what is actually worth creating.
What is taste
Taste it not about having an aesthetic feed or jumping on the latest visual trends. We are talking about something deeper. About the ability to know whether an idea is genuinely good or just a fad. This doesn’t come from analyzing other creators and reverse engineering what works for them. This type of judgement comes from developing your own unique point of view that is so specific to you, that your audience would notice if it shifted.
Most creators are overwhelmed by the pressure to post and stay relevant by feeding the algorithm. And developing the ability to judge what is good or not can be slow and uncomfortable, and needs you to look at yourself, your values and what you stand for.
Why does taste matter more now
With AI, the tools have become cheap and the content creation templates are easily available. AI has accelerated the content creation process where producing something good enough takes a fraction of the time and effort it used to. And because of this, everyone is producing more and more content.
This leads to a level of content saturation that human attention cannot keep up with and audiences have the same, or even less, attention to give. In this overwhelming volume of content being churned out, people start to gravitate towards creators that feel human, with a genuine point of view. The brands are noticing where the trust lives and their focus is shifting from audience demographics to creators who have something to say, and who have built a relationship with their audience based on their taste.
If you have been overly relying on trends to keep you afloat, your numbers might look fine, but your audience is watching someone who sounds like everyone else.
What we see as an agency in our work with creators
We work with a lot of creators around the world for different brands, markets and niches and the ones that get brought back or are offered long-term partnerships are those that you can tell immediately what they stand for. From the topics they create content around to the way they frame things and the brand deals they say “yes” to. You know they are consistent in their judgement and it’s easy to work with them because you know what they stand for. This type of creators are hired not only for their community but, more importantly, for the way they think.
How to develop taste
As creators, we are but humans ourselves, and we can also get stuck in the vicious cycle of doom scrolling, consuming too much brain rot content, following too blindly the trends. When you marinate too much in your algorithm and your own niche, you draw inspiration from the same pools your competitors are drawing from, and this directly impacts the way you create. If you keep blending in, it becomes difficult to develop your own voice.
The creators with the sharpest editorial instincts are looking outside their niche and outside the algorithm at our finger tips. Read books, watch a movie, visit a museum, look at how industries that are polar opposite to yours approach their strategy and content creation. These might not directly give you an idea for your next post, but will refresh your brain and take you out of the trap of the algorithm’s feedback loop. We wrote about this before, on changing your environment and consuming with intention to jump-start your creativity.
You cannot develop taste, judgement, if you are always comparing yourself to others and give in to the pressure to be on top of trends 24/7. The clearest decisions come to you when you take a step back.
Taste is not something you either have or you don’t. It’s something you build every time you make a decision about what to post and what not to, and those decisions, over time, are what make you worth following.