Keeping Up With the Algorithms
- Richard Adler
- Feb 18
- 4 min read
If you work with any 2026 garden-variety business content, the pressure to keep up on these platforms can feel relentless. And like a garden, every platform is like it's own crop with its own individual needs, amount of attention, and nutrients. But is there ever such a thing as enough when the environment keeps changing?
Sure, AI has made that easier in a lot of ways. Scripts drafted in seconds. Voiceovers generated instantly. Transcripts and recommended story arcs created instantaneously, with bandwidth faster than it ever has been. But moving fast and making more stuff doesn't necessarily align with your content strategy.
It's not that different from the personal pressure we feel on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to post our vacation photos, that concert, the workout, your dinner, your dog, your kids, your nephew, that sunset, that Thanksgiving meme from last decade that resurfaces every year without fail.
To quote the late, great Betty White's SNL monologue from 2014, "Facebook just sounds like a drag, in my day seeing pictures of people's vacations was considered a punishment."
Do I really need to see your vacation? No. But Meta's $200+ billion in total revenue in 2025 would like us to think we do.
So I ask the question, where does quality end and quantity begin when it comes to the pressures of content marketing for businesses?
THE CASE FOR QUANTITY > QUALITY
When does it make sense to lean into quantity over quality?
There are moments when volume is not only appropriate, it is strategic. If you are running ads against your content and capitalizing on that, testing messaging, building a founder presence, or launching a podcast, consistency and variation matter. You are throwing everything you have up against the wall and seeing what sticks.
In this mode, speed creates insight. You are not chasing perfection. You are building momentum. And when that momentum is intentional, it works.
ON THE OTHER HAND, WE HAVE QUALITY > QUANTITY
This is my favorite type of content, and the one that I believe is best suited for most B2B strategies. Building something made to last, like a glistening Patek Philippe watch.
You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.
Timeless, aspirational, storyboarded.
Some videos are not meant to move quickly through a feed. They are meant to stay relevant for a longer period of time. Some examples might include a company film, a brand relaunch, a flagship podcast episode, a customer story, an important product explainer, thought-leadership, a community outreach piece. These are not just pieces of content. They shape perception. They communicate your identity. They tell the world who you are as a business and as individuals.
One might even say, you don't post content, you release it for the next quarter.
AI + ALGORITHM MUDDYING THE WATERS
Where it becomes confusing is that the pressure to keep up is amplified from two directions at once.
On one side, AI makes it possible to generate content almost instantly (at varying degrees of quality vs. feed slop). Scripts can be drafted in minutes. Variations can be spun up without rebuilding from scratch. Production feels lighter. Faster. More accessible. And sometimes good enough is good enough.
On the other side, algorithmic social feeds reward those who post regularly. The more you scroll, the more it appears that everyone else is publishing, cutting, repurposing, and distributing at an endless pace. That combination creates something subtle but powerful. A sense that if we are not producing at an insane, almost unachievable pace, we risk slipping out of relevance. It is not that different from the personal FOMO we feel when we hesitate to post the vacation or the concert.
So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we're not careful, we're going to have entire feeds of AI content being rewarded by algorithms needing more AI content, and so on. Or, are we there already?
As I said to a friend who posted no less than 15 stories at Beyoncé’s latest world tour, "Did you enjoy going to the concert, or did you enjoy that people know you went to the concert?"
Real talk: If I was on the floor at The Renaissance Tour, my camera would be out the whole time too. But I digress.
Another layer? Boosted posts which may show traffic and attention, but does it mean success? It depends on how you're measuring it. More "likes" or views isn't always an accurate way to measure success.
IS IT REALLY QUANTITY VS. QUALITY
According to Fractional CMO Jessica Vogol, not always.
"I typically make decisions about content strategy by first looking at our most important goals - and that kind of guides how we're thinking about content. I can’t imagine that I’d ever be comfortable anchoring my content strategy purely to content quantity. Regardless of the volume, there’s reputational risk when you stop worrying about quality! I typically like to think about what is the piece of “anchor content” powering our campaigns, knock those out of the park - and then use AI to atomize content to really drive the scale."
While I agree with Jessica, I also think that the quantity vs. quality lane often gets chosen out of the pressures of keeping up with competitors, not out of intention. In an ideal world, churning out quantity at a high quality every time is achievable. In the real world (companies big and small), budgets, timelines, and a rapidly changing world hamper even the best-laid plans.
Returning to my original gardening metaphor, successful content strategy is not a race to see how many seeds you can scatter across every platform and see what comes of it. It is a question of what you are actually trying to grow, and doing so with intention, methodical care, and patience.
Whether you are building momentum, building something meant to last, or a combination of both, the best results come when you decide what you are cultivating before you start digging. And if your garden grows something you didn't mean for it to, pivot and get back on track.
Disclaimer: Our posts are always written by a non-robot human person so mind the typos. #sorrynotsorry
