COMMENTS
Great post, Rick. For us small business owners, it's so important not to invest megabucks in one single anything - video, white paper, blog post, etc. - because first, one is a very, very small number and no matter how good that one is, it's just not going to have an impact. And two, as you point out so well - you don't know what will be a hit. What if you spend a huge chunk of time & money on one video or one white paper and it's a miss? Better to populate your site with content. Populate with video throughout your site. Populate your blog with many, many posts. Develop lots of assets people can download & pass around. If you do, you're guaranteed that somewhere in all that content will be blockbusters.
This is a great reminder of an important truth - something to always remember when perseverating over less important details.
This is also very true for ideas and promotion development. Instead of depending on one single "big" idea / ad ruining your budget, you should also have "agile" approach. Trying many small ideas. Try a social media campaign, a twitter account, a group, a conversation...and give yourself the chance to examine how it works out. In an ever changing environment, like the internet, you can't bet it will always produce the results you expect.
So for the small businesses, it might be better to try many few things, get familiar and improve what works, abandon what doesn't instead of burning all budget in a single operation...
If you read a lot, you have to prioritize. If it's a long post, some people may tag it to read later, but short posts often get read and acted upon immediately. Great post!
This is a cool way to look at it. This also takes the pressure off of always producing something huge. My takeaway from the post is to try a lot of different things and see what sticks.
I love the analogy and it makes all the sense in the world. This can also be your portfolio of ideas and inspirations for when you have writers block.
Thank you for sharing with us and showing the light!
RMSorg
yes it is purely true that instead of getting sticked to a big idea we should commit several small ideas as we all know if the destination is too big & far from us then we should complete our path to it by step by step !
Completely agree. I've always thought this way.
When I was growing up I would often think about client companies who signed off on their ad agencies "big idea" for a campaign only to have that idea turn out to be junk.
Similar line of thinking here.
You simply don't know what people are going to respond to unless we all can afford access to neuromarketing techniques.
Keep producing the content and eventually you'll make a platinum record ; )
Hi Rick,
I agree that diversification is important, but not in the way this article discusses.
I disagree that film studios make money from wild product diversification; rather the evidence indicates they make their money through
distribution channel diversification.
Yes, the oft-quoted "law of averages" applies to pretty much every industry. The more movies I pump out, the higher the number of good ones I'll eventually produce. The problem with this is that you end up flooding the market with garbage, wasting consumer time and money while you wait for your big hit to come through. That's just rude in my opinion.
Now, maybe these low revenue-generating films aren't actually bombs. Maybe they're successful, but they generate low revenue because they appeal to a very low-populated market niche. If that's the case, that's
market diversification, and that's understandable. They're trying to grab market share from goths and business women alike. If that's the case, we can use their example as a license to flood the market irresponsibly with poorly written blog posts about things people don't care about.
That doesn't create value; it just creates noise. Expecting the community to sift through your poorly written articles and pick out the gems is like a jeweler telling the customer to root around a sandbox to find their diamond.
Just my two cents. Love to hear your thoughts!