November 16, 2005

TWO Simple Keys to Success

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 1:45 pm

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.

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6 Comments to “TWO Simple Keys to Success”

  1. November 16th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
    liberalcowboy said

    you forgot the one about making fun of all your readers. that is a sure fire one too.

  2. November 16th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hey,Cowboy,
    Where you been? No one’s made fun of me since I don’t know when? You slacking?
    Liz

  3. November 17th, 2005 at 7:38 am
    indeterminacy said

    That second point is difficult to implement if one is blogging at blogspot because blogger offers no categories. That’s the one feature they really should add. I’ve always liked being able to click a category and get all the posts in that area.

  4. November 17th, 2005 at 9:14 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Indie,
    I think they do tell you to hack a categories section, but I find their hacks often undo more than they do. How I’ve gotten around it is to hard link my blogroll as we talked about last week, but to use blorolling for three categories that are important to me–Storytelling, Reports by the 65th Crayon, Pieces on Writing, and Poetry. I keep the hard links in a blog file document in case blogrolling, which has a habit of doing, goes down. It’s a cinch to update!
    Hope that helps
    Liz

  5. November 17th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    Liz, you are a legend at this publishing game - you hit it right on the head about what we’re all on about.

    I’m printing this post and putting it in my business plan so that once in a while I can read it when I head off the rails at times.

    9 to 35M agsinst an industry 3% - you do any consultancy work for us little bloggers/publishers types ;-)

  6. November 17th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Martin,
    It really happened just that way. Two things that’s what we kept our eye on. At one point I told our owner I had it tatooed somewhere and if he didn’t pay attention I would make him read it. . . . :)

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