Why Your Content Feels Harder Than It Should (And the Visual Decisions You Haven’t Made Yet)

If creating content feels heavier than it should, it’s probably not because you lack creativity, discipline, or strategy. It’s because too many visual decisions are still undecided.

In this episode of The Consistency Corner, Ruthie breaks down why visuals aren’t just a “vibe” — they’re a set of strategic decisions that quietly drive (or drain) your energy every time you sit down to create content. From choosing video versus static content, to deciding between polished and raw, text-heavy or image-forward, these choices shape how sustainable your content system actually is.

You’ll learn why copying what’s “working” for other brands often increases friction instead of reducing it, and how clarity around visual preferences removes decision fatigue for you and your team. This conversation is especially for capable, experienced founders who know what they’re doing — but still feel resistance when it comes to marketing execution.

In a world saturated with AI-generated sameness, Ruthie explains why alignment — not volume — is the real differentiator, and how intentional visual strategy builds familiarity, trust, and consistency without feeling manufactured.

If content creation has started to feel like a grind, this episode will help you identify the decisions that need to be made once — so you don’t have to keep making them over and over again.

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@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:01.578)

One of the reasons that content often feels harder than it should be is because most people treat visuals like a vibe instead of a decision. And that's what we're going to talk about here on the consistency corner. Welcome back friends to another episode. I'm really excited to dig into this today because when we talk about the mental load of marketing, the decisions we need to make around visuals are deeper than you might think. So.

you're going to create a post and you might open Instagram or you might open Canva and you're thinking to yourself, do I need to be on video more? Should this be more polished? Why does this look good for everybody else but not for me? Why do these templates not work? Do these colors work okay? What about fonts? And that's just design choices. And suddenly every post might be requiring a mini identity crisis. And even if you have a professionally designed

brand portfolio, like visual brand visuals, there's still a lot of decisions to be made. And this episode exists because I see this all the time, especially with capable, experienced founders who know what they're doing, but they still feel friction when it comes to content. They feel like if somebody else is supporting them with content, they constantly have to edit. They feel like if they're creating their own content, it's a slog or a grind.

And it's not because they lack creativity, because they don't get branding, but because visual preference hasn't yet been clearly decided. And undecided things create mental load. So today we're going to talk about how to make those decisions on purpose so content stops feeling like guesswork. I want to be really clear on this. When we work with clients one-on-one, this is not something we skip. Before we create any posts,

before anything is approved, we talk, before we even talk about cadence or platforms, we talk about visuals. So number one, we make sure everybody is on the same page with colors, fonts, brand guidelines. If they don't exist, we create them. If they do exist, we make sure everybody's on the same page. And then it comes to visual preferences that are maybe not always articulated.

Ruthie Sterrett (02:25.448)

in a brand guide. And these are visual preferences that might be your personal preference. They might be the preference of your audience. And it's the way your content is going to come together. So let's talk about this for a second.

There's no universal formula for visual content. No perfect ratio, no aesthetic that you should have, no format that everyone must use. The right visual mix depends on three things. Number one, the brand. Number two, the team creating the content. And number three, the audience.

And your job is not to copy what's working for someone else, but to make informed decisions based upon your reality. So I want to walk you through some of these decisions that I'm talking about. And we use this inside our Visual Mix framework. I don't want you to have to memorize them, but I just want you to think about this, because these are some of the decisions. If you can make the decisions and document them and then use them as a guideline, content creation becomes faster and easier.

So number one, your preference of video versus static. We know that video is powerful. We know that it expands reach quickly. It humanizes your brand. And it essentially is effective in growth seasons and launch windows, like especially effective then. But video also takes more energy, requires comfort on camera or creating strong B-roll or hiring someone to capture professional brand video.

it takes a lot more energy in terms of editing. It isn't always sustainable week after week. While static content like carousels, graphics, text posts, and photos often can drive saves and shares and communicate frameworks clearly, and they might be easier to batch and repurpose, we know that their reach isn't always as strong. So it isn't necessarily about choosing one or the other, but it's deciding what role each plays in your strategy.

Ruthie Sterrett (04:35.456)

If your video capacity is limited, we're going to adjust. If design capacity is strong, we might lean in there. So they're decisions that alone can remove so much friction. Now, when it comes to static images, a decision that we need to make, it text heavy or image heavy? So text heavy content is often fast to create, easy to share.

and great for sharing thought leaderships, opinions, and points of view. Image-heavy content can build lifestyle and credibility, strengthen brand identity, and can work really well for storytelling. Neither one is better. But when you don't decide which one you want to lean into, or if you want an even mix of the two, you can feel scattered when making design decisions and doing content creation.

A founder-led brand can sometimes lean more text-heavy for authenticity. A product or luxury brand might lean more image-heavy for trust. Again, clarity in making this decision removes guesswork. And it's not always about your personal preference. Remember, we talked about what does the audience respond to and what does your team have access to? If you want image-heavy visuals,

but you don't have a library of images, well then we have a problem, right? If you want text heavy content, but you don't have anything to say, well then we have a problem. So again, all of this kind of guides the content decisions before we sit down to actually create. Now here's another tension point that I often see, and this is the decision in polished versus raw. Polished content can signal professionalism,

It can elevate perceived value, while raw content feels more human. It can drive DMs and shares and builds connection faster in an AI-saturated world. Right now, raw content is outperforming overly polished content because it feels real. But that doesn't mean polish disappears. It means we decide when to use each instead of just defaulting to trends.

Ruthie Sterrett (06:57.27)

and we decide what level of polish is important for the brand. What level of raw is appropriate for the brand. There are decisions that we make with our clients ahead of time so that when they go to get a batch of content for approval, it's like, yep, we're on the same page. Everybody knows what we're looking for here. And they are decisions that have to be made upfront. But there are decisions that when we make them upfront, we don't have to make them over and over and over again.

If you've ever worked with a team, a VA, or an agency, or even an internal partner, and you felt like you couldn't articulate what you actually wanted, things maybe looked fine, but it just wasn't quite right, and the feedback loops dragged on forever. This might be why. The problem wasn't your taste, but it was the absence of a shared framework. Once visual preferences are decided and documented, content creation gets lighter. Approvals get faster.

and trust improves. So we talked a little bit about AI, but I want to dig into this a little bit more. We are surrounded by AI-generated content, clean captions, formulaic captions, perfectly formatted post, endless ideas, frameworks, and visuals that technically check all the boxes. But the problem isn't that the AI content is bad. It's that it's freaking everywhere.

which means sameness is easier than ever. In an attention economy like this, what actually helps a brand stand out isn't just volume, but its authenticity and recognizability. And that's where a defined visual strategy can become a differentiator instead of a nice to have. When your visuals are decided on purpose, whether that's a clear mix of formats, tone, polish, presence,

and even vibe, your content feels consistent without feeling manufactured. It feels human, not because it's messy or overproduced or underproduced. It's aligned. And alignment is what authenticity actually is going to look like in 2026. Authenticity isn't oversharing. It's knowing who you are and coherently sharing the important details.

Ruthie Sterrett (09:24.066)

When your visuals match how you lead, how you think, how your brand shows up in the world, when that's in place, your content doesn't have to fight for attention. It can become familiar. And familiarity builds trust. This is why we don't leave this visual decisions to chance and why in a world full of AI generated noise, clarity is the thing that cuts through.

We've talked a few times on the podcast this month about the Strategy Studio, which is opening in February. And inside our Cornerstone Strategy, we dig into these decisions, these visual decisions in detail. But we'll also be leading our Strategy Studio members through this decision-making process. We're going to have conversations about visual style so that you know what you're looking for, so you can communicate it to a team member, a VA.

AI or even yourself when you're sitting down to create content. And inside the Strategy Studio, you'll have access to tools like Clarity GPT, which acts like a thinking partner for brand and messaging decisions and future tools that are in development like Strategy GPT, which will help guide decisions like Visual Mix, taking into account your audience, your brand, your business goals and your team.

These containers for decision making are there so that everything doesn't have to live in your head. So here's what I want your takeaway to be today. If content creation feels harder than it should be, there's a good chance that visual preferences have not yet been decided. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because undecided things demand energy and they cause friction. You don't have to become a designer. You don't have to follow every trend, but you need a few clear decisions.

that guide everything else. And once those are in place, content becomes easier to batch. It starts feeling more aligned. It becomes more strategic. And the mental load actually lifts. If you have questions about visual preference, I freaking love talking about this stuff. So send me a DM on Instagram and let's chat about it. Let's talk about content styles because we didn't even get into like meme based content.

Ruthie Sterrett (11:45.528)

quote based content, scripted video, B-roll video, face to camera video. I mean, there's like probably 10 to 12 categories that it can feel like, my gosh, do I have to do all of these things? Or it can feel like I'm gonna lean into one or two to make it easier, but I don't know what to do. Again, they're just more decisions to be made along with our visual preferences. So we just find visual preferences first.

which can then help us define content styles. So I could go down a rabbit hole of decisions to be made, which is what I love doing when we create cornerstone strategies for our clients. But I'm happy to talk about it in the DMs with you. So chat with me on Instagram. And if you're interested in learning more about the strategy studio and getting access to those thinking partner GPTs, you can check out the wait list in the show notes and learn more about it when doors open in February. Thanks so much for being here and have a great rest of your day. See you in the next episode.