I spend about 15 hours a week creating content. Not sure if any of it actually matters.

Dude I feel this so hard. I got to the point where I was spending more time tweaking and cross-posting than actually building the thing I care about. The endless scroll guilt hits different when you’re supposed to be “working” but your brain is mush. I ended up switching most of my social stuff over to PostClaw to just batch it all at once because I literally couldn’t keep up and was burning out. Not perfect, the UI’s a bit clunky sometimes, but not having to rewrite the same post for every damn platform saved me hours and honestly my sanity. Still don’t know if any of it “matters” but at least I don’t lose entire afternoons to fiddling with scheduling tabs anymore

The attribution problem is real and I don't think it gets solved cleanly. I got 50 waitlist signups from "X and Reddit" too and genuinely couldn't tell you which one. UTM links help a little but people still share URLs without them.

What did shift things for me: picking one platform to go deep on for 60 days rather than spreading across all of them. The multi-platform thing felt productive but it was mostly just expensive switching cost. I still post on the others but my real effort goes to one.

The scrolling thing is a separate problem though and probably worth addressing on its own — that one's costing you at home, not just at work.

The attribution problem you mentioned is the one nobody talks about. You got 50 waitlist signups but can't prove which platform drove them — that's actually the norm, not a failure. Most conversions happen after multiple touchpoints anyway.

The harder question is whether the 15 hours are building something that compounds (audience, trust, SEO) or just filling a calendar. Those two things feel identical in the short term but are very different at month 12.

What's your current split between platforms? Curious if one is showing any signal at all even if it's small.

I've been dealing with the same thing lately. No matter how much i try and how much research i put behind, it feels indeed just like throwing time into a void

Someone explained marketing to me like this before and I now use it as a prism to look through whenever I feel like I'm mindlessly scrolling, pushing out content that no-one is listening to or just feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. At it's core marketing is just storytelling.

If you forget all the data for a second, views, watch time, all of it. Fundamentally you are trying to write a story. That story of course needs to be interesting, it needs to be written in a way that the people you want to read it want it, and anyone who reads it wants to read it at the right time. I may take this metaphor too far; your target market is basically your audience, you're not writing a complex book about the ingenious design of the aluminium can for an audience who primarily cares about flower arranging, you're writing it for people who care about weird engineering marvels. Your language, the tone, the information you convey all should be tailored towards the specific audience that you are trying to get to read your book. You are also giving it to them when and where they have the time, energy and capacity to read it - platform and content type. Someone sat on a long ass train journey is more likely to be reading and absorbing than someone at a concert.

Imagine that every piece of content you make is part of this larger story, how is it drawing your readers along and keeping them engaged. Thats where your pillars of content come in, they aren't restricting you but guiding your content to make sure it fits within the overall structure, of course you detours (like jumping on cultural moments) but those are just side-plots and shouldn't take away from the main story.

The fundamentals of story writing apply to each piece of content too, your hook is like your introduction. I think I had plenty of writing classes where the teacher would say to me that even if the story is interesting they didn't get past the intro. Luckily rather than just words we get to use visuals, sounds and also... words. Tapping into psychological tricks to basically stop someone in their tracks and go where tf is this story going next. Paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 are the body of your content, the information that you are trying to convey. Remember that the body isn't just random information, its developing the story. Finally, and this is where the metaphor kind of breaks down, the conclusion is what you actually want people to do after they've consumed your content, its short and punchy and leaves an impression. You have to motivate often times super content fogged people to switch on and actually do something.

I take this framing and use it to scroll through content, maybe someone is the car niche has incredible story pacing - how can I use that and adapt it. Someone in the music industry has sick intros that hook me in instantly - can I turn that into something for myself.

Apologies for the waffle and hope it helps

Meanwhile I'm burning hours consuming other people's content. Instagram, YouTube Shorts, X. Thousands of pieces in an hour just scrolling.

I recently started doing content marketing on social media (LI, Reddit, X), and I found this starting to become an issue as well. It's so easy to get hooked when the drugs are in your face all day, all the time. Thinking of setting very strict time frames on social activitives. E.g., 2 hour new content, 1 hour answering comments.

How do you figure out what's actually working before you waste another year on it?

Just use 2minutemarketing.com. Free tier works well. Takes me like 10 min to plan a month of content

the fact that you got 50 people on a waitlist but can't tell which platform drove them is the actual problem here. 15 hours a week isn't crazy if you know what's working but right now you're just guessing.

before creating anything else i'd put different links on each platform for a couple weeks. even just utm parameters or separate landing page urls. once you know which platform actually sends people who sign up you can cut the rest and get 10 hours back.

also the scrolling thing is real and probably eating more of those 15 hours than you think. "research" that turns into an hour of watching other people's content is the biggest time trap in this whole game

This one hit close to home. I’ve been in that same loop, and plenty of creators are too—they just don’t say it out loud because admitting “I don’t know if this is even working” feels like failure.

You don’t have an effort problem. 50 waitlist signups is real traction—actual people raising their hand. The bottleneck is attribution: you can’t tell which platform drove them, so everything feels like wasted effort. Most of us are blind to what’s converting and then blame the content.

15 hours isn’t the issue; it’s how they’re split. Spreading across YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Reddit isn’t strategy—it’s just coverage. What if you cut to 6 focused hours on the 1–2 platforms that actually delivered signups, and used the rest for product, sales, or your kids? Content without a clear distribution plan is basically a hobby.

The scrolling isn’t laziness; it’s decision fatigue. Too many platforms + formats + micro-choices every day fries your brain. You’re noticing it bleed into time with your kids—that’s the signal to change.

What helped me was ruthless cuts. I picked one platform where I could build a fast feedback loop, leaned into trends already working in my niche instead of guessing, and stopped burning hours on research/ideation. That frustration is exactly why I started building my own rool that surfaces trending topics in specific niches and generates ideas from what’s actually moving. Hopefully to beta soon.

The real rules aren’t the guru ones: pick fewer bets, measure what you can, kill what you can’t see, and protect your attention like it’s gold—especially with small kids.

You’re not failing. You’re just playing on too many boards. Narrow it down, get visibility, and it’ll start to click. Hang in there!