If your theory is "build it and they will come", you have to make sure there is a "they"

Raymond Chen

Creating an infrastructure for managing the content you wish you had doesn’t actually create that content. Another possible response to the crisis management issue I considered yesterday is to say “Okay, we need to have an official Company X Breaking News site so that people who are looking for an official response to some hot topic can find it.” Except that if you look at the original problem, it wouldn’t have helped. The problem wasn’t that there was a response to the hot topic that nobody could find. There was no response at all because the people who would formulate that response were busy working on the problem. Having a “Company X Breaking News” site wouldn’t have helped because there was no content to put in it in the first place! Generate the content first, and then worry about how to present it. And I think that once the content shows up—wherever it shows up—people will find it even without needing a “Company X Breaking News” site. Some blogger will find it, and if it really is a hot topic, then the link will spread. (And if it’s not a hot topic, then the link will languish since nobody cares about it.)

This is something I see a lot of: thinking that you can solve the “We need good content!” problem by creating some infrastructure to manage that content you want to have. This isn’t a “Build it and they will come” thing, because there is no they. The way to solve the “We need good content!” problem is “Produce good content!”

Raymond Chen

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