{"id":4166,"date":"2012-08-31T11:36:19","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T01:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=4166"},"modified":"2012-06-03T14:48:36","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T04:48:36","slug":"consistency-over-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/08\/consistency-over-stats\/","title":{"rendered":"Consistency over stats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"color: #054578; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/baseball__hit_silohette2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-4176\" title=\"baseball__hit\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/baseball__hit_silohette2.jpg\" alt=\"consistency for baseball batting\" width=\"36\" height=\"79\" \/><\/a>In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"color: #006699; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;\"><em>&#8211; Tom Seaver<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I rediscovered this quote from my <a title=\"Business writing ideas newsletter from August 2009\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/newsletter\/09aug.html\" target=\"_blank\">August 2009 newsletter<\/a>, along with\u00a0my article on consistency, and thought it worth highlighting again.<\/p>\n<h2>What is consistency?<\/h2>\n<p>Before discussing what consistency means within a business, here is the definition:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">consistency:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0applying to the same principles or guidelines, not contradicting<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4171\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mussaman_curry.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4171\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-4171\" title=\"mussaman_curry\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mussaman_curry-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"mussaman curry is the same everywhere\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4171\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mussaman curry has a consistent taste &amp; ingredients<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In simpler terms, consistency means made up of the same things. So being consistent in a restaurant means always using the same ingredients for a dish &#8211; swapping fish into a beef curry gives a different result and is not consistent.<\/p>\n<p>How would a restaurant survive if some dishes are made with care while others are put together quickly? The lack of consistency would confuse diners &#8211; and those getting a poor dish the first time may never return.<\/p>\n<p>For business communications, consistency\u00a0means making all the words, images, layouts and messages work together with the same look and feel, the <a title=\"Starting your style guide\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/starting-your-style-guide\/\" target=\"_blank\">same overall style<\/a>. If everything\u00a0is consistent, the background message remains the same regardless of the specifics of each piece of writing.<\/p>\n<h2>Consistency over stats<\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to get distracted and try something new in the hope of fast results.<\/p>\n<p>For example, some people get caught up in the number of <a title=\"Growing your blog readership\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/03\/growing-your-blog-readership\/\" target=\"_blank\">visitors coming to their blog<\/a> and hear that more posts means more traffic.<\/p>\n<p>So they write two posts a day instead of three a week but time is limited so\u00a0many posts are written fast with less care. Traffic may rise initially with the more frequent posts, but people won&#8217;t come back as often if they can&#8217;t rely on the quality of posts.<\/p>\n<p>It may be slower, but three consistently good posts will attract more loyal readers than one good and nine poor posts a week.<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever worried over the numbers at the sake of quality and consistency?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you have been a customer\u00a0of a business\u00a0that got distracted from consistency &#8211; how did that affect your relationship with the business?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.\u201d &#8211; Tom Seaver I rediscovered this quote from my August 2009 newsletter, along with\u00a0my article on consistency, and thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1425],"tags":[310,1515,1263,1514],"class_list":["post-4166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-communications","tag-consistency","tag-distracted","tag-quality","tag-stats"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4178,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions\/4178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}