In praise of quick and dirty: when the pursuit of excellence is the enemy of success. Increasingly I believe that we in the media business doom ourselves by our devotion to quality.
Before you get out the gunpowder, let me explain myself. I love excellence. Awesomeness is, well, awesome. But the premature pursuit of excellence can kill you. I'm going to pick on my friend Howard Owens as an example, and I hope he won't mind. The site's design is adequate. So Howard could run to his bank, take out a big loan, hire somebody like Roger or Mario to do the design, then hire some contract programmers to convert the design into a website theme, and make his website presentationally excellent. So why doesn't he do this?
The unpleasant reality of business is that it's all about money. If the typical media company sets out to do something new, the process usually follows this pattern: The guys from Harvard Business School, which of course is devoted to excellence, will tell you this is a path to your doom. So why do we keep doing it? Rethinking 'Crossing The Chasm' In 1991 Geoffrey A.
Moore wrote a book that became widely read and quoted in the business community and turned into a theory - Crossing the Chasm. Moore argued that there is a gap that exists between the early adopters of any technology and the mass market. He explained that many technologies initially get pulled into the market by enthusiasts, but later fail to get wider adoption. So to create a company that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, entrepreneurs need to come up with strategies that will help them build a bridge across that gap.
The reason that the book got so popular, and was studied in MBA programs and talked about in top-tier VC firms, is because its analysis is right on the money. The reason that business people spend time trying to figure out how to bridge the gap is because the gap is what stands between them and a lot of money. Today's fast changing world redefines how we do business. The Classic Chasm Crossing Why VCs Care Why Startups Don't Care The Real Problem. Content Trumps SEO and Links. For marketing, content trumps SEO and links back to your site.
That’s not to say there is no value in SEO or links, just that if you have to choose or prioritize, content is at the top of the heap. If you’re a big company, you can probably choose to invest in all with far more resources than perhaps are even needed. But the smaller your budget, the more likely you had better choose and make the right choice. Pssst: the right choice is Content! It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers.