I was a VP in an executive meeting at a publishing company. The people around the table had the most solid core competencies I’d ever seen in one room. We’d been working together for five months. Our quest was to turn around a failing company. We had about six months left to do it.
“How do we grow the company?” they said.
Three reasons made them turn to me with the question. I had the applicable experience in that industry; I came from a high-growth company; and I was the product person who knew the customers intimately.
How do we grow the company?
Sometimes I get lucky, and the words that come out make me look smart. This was one of those times. My answer became the company’s guiding statement. I’ll adapt them slightly to apply to blogging.
All successful publishers do two things consistently.
- Give readers what they want–quality content to read that informs, entertains, and makes their lives easier or more fun.
- Give readers more opportunities to find what they want easily–posting with frequency, writing clearly and consistenly, keeping tags and archives understandable and organized, pointing to other blogs that answer questions and needs.
We give them more of the content they want and more opportunities to find it.
It’s not rocket science. It’s not even particularly clever. It’s simple, respectful, and elegant. Readers know what they need. If they had time to, they could find it themselves. We are the value-added. Those two simple keys–more great content and more ways to get to it–define their reason for reading us.
Our task is to come to agreement with our readers on the definition of quality content and never stray from delivering it.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
PS That little company I spoke of went from $9M to $35M in 3 yrs. At the same time the industry grew 3%, and the dot.com bust occurred.