I’ve been carrying around a post, “Get your content right and the rest will follow“, that appeared on the Folio: web site in early December.
Although the article targets business-to-business publishers, the challenges it addresses are closer to universal. “Striking the right balance of print, online, social media and tablet apps” and “getting closer to the audience” resonate across most publishing segments, including associations.
The author, Kelley Damore, identifies all the right problems: the need for segmentation; identifying an audience, especially through intermediaries; and measuring ROI across multiple platforms. Still, I found myself asking: does “first-rate edit” necessarily solve these problems?
A bit more than a year ago I wrote about the disruptive value of being “good enough“. Publishers might be better off solving a problem or meeting a need not with “good editorial”, however defined, but with a solution the reader valued.
I know that’s heresy, and it somewhat contradicts a post I wrote earlier this week about The Atlantic. But in an era of abundance, I am not convinced that “good editorial eventually translates into strong readership, regardless of the platform”.
