It's all very well setting a goal/target for oneself or committing to a target number of posts per day/week/month, or something, but one has to ask
How? and
Why?, because:
- Goals/targets/MBOs (Management By Objectives) are, by definition imaginary and irrational constructs, and, as statements, usually neatly sidestep the question as to how one will indubitably be able to deliver/perform (Deming).
- Having no basis in statistical veracity, they thus become a rod for one's own back.
- What tends to happen is that the individual, having made some kind of a commitment to (say) make so many blog posts per week, for a fee, finds that there are occasions when actually there simply is not much of any interest to write about.
- However, the writing must go on (or the fees will stop). So, in a sort of "Never mind the quality, feel the width" approach, what the writer produces is something - anything - to fill the void, and mediocrity and dilution of quality of content is the result - e.g., "10 things you absolutely must do before committing suicide", or "The 5 things every CIO needs to know about Cloud computing", or similar.
- So, the readers - most of whom are likely to be relatively sophisticated if they are reading stuff online - might read the vapid drivel once, but next time they see one of these supposedly attention-grabbing headlines, they will go "Uh-uh. I'm not going to fall for that again and waste time reading that sort of drivel.", and are gone in a mouseclick.
Some classic examples of this can arguably be found, typically, in Lifehacker, MakeUseOf, and arsTechnica, to name but three. They were very good
once, but seem to have gradually gone to the dogs, with AT seemingly having gone all religio-political ideological and sometimes ramming their PC POV down the readers' throats. However, apart from that difference, what they all seem to share in common is that they are become what are called "t#rd-eaters". For example, they may often pick up the same piece of current "hot" news from a news source, and they then seem to regurgitate it almost verbatim, with no particularly original input or added value - e.g., cogent, critical or investigative journalism - though they may sometimes imply that
they are giving you the full beeswax, though, sadlement, this is more often than not likely to be self-aggrandizement BS rather than BW.
This (above) is really the other side of the coin to I what mentioned in another thread:
@Stephen66515: Well, if you are putting it like that in marketing terms, then I would generally look for a clear communications strategy, including, for example:
- What/who is defined as being the target market(s), and why ("everybody" or "anybody" would generally not seem to be a useful answer to that).
- What would be seen as the most desirable (for DCF) response/behaviour, required from the defined target market, and why.
- What specific and consistently articulated communications (from DCF, or third parties on DCF's behalf) ) would be necessary to be communicated to the target(s) that could be most likely to elicit those desirable responses/behaviours, and why.
- What communications media/channels would be most likely to enable the communication to effectively reach said target market(s), and why.
- When those messages would need to be sent via the media/channel(s) selected (co-ordinated message communications plan) for max effect, and why.
- Feedback + analysis: What the outcome of the communications plan was (measurement/statistics).
- Update/document the plan to include what needs to be done to improve the quality of the marketing plan for next time around.
This would be a deliberative method essentially following the Deming/Shewhart cycle for improvement of the marketing planning process.
(See image below)
Failure to take a methodical approach (i.e., no method) would generally tend to mean that the strategy was likely to be no more successful than the typical dog-eat-dog approach of most mediocre marketing efforts - refer book: Competing for the Future, by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad (21 Mar 1996).
-IainB
However, if this is all too hard/analytical or makes one's brain hurt just simply
thinking about it, then one can always fall back on gut instinct, I suppose ... that would be Mr. Gumby's preferred approach, so I'm all for it.
A quick search of eBay might throw up some good digitised Tyrolean text rendering guns - of the sort apparently used by Lifehacker - that might be able to do the job of automating posting to the DC forum/blog. Real "productivity" tools.
