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> You're completely right that it isn't a marketing strategy, though. Have you thought about creating a formal program to preflight more in-depth content? It's
by Alex3917 8y ago
> You're completely right that it isn't a marketing strategy, though.
Have you thought about creating a formal program to preflight more in-depth content? It's hard to justify spending 100 hours writing a blog post when the chances of having more than zero people see it depend on whether or not Elon Musk smoked weed that day or whatever. I realize it's partly just impossible to predict what people will be interested in, but that could be a way to encourage people to create more interesting stuff.
- dang 8y agoYes, I've thought about that a lot. I agree with you that the economics are off—not in terms of money, but time and energy and attention. If that could change, then the pool of interesting projects and articles might grow, which would be great for us all. How would you go about it?
- Alex3917 8y agoI think it's fine just to have people submit proposals, getting the proposal approved, and then creating the content and having the final post approved, rejected, or getting suggested edits. This could either be done by the mods or by some sort of rotating panel. Then the final content could be treated like the jobs postings, where there is a separate tab for preflighted content and it lives on the front page for at least some minimum amount of time, longer if there is engagement. It could also be interesting to try something like Edge.org, where different people create content around a given question or theme.
- jen729w 8y agoIsn’t this where persistence pays off? Don’t spend 100 hours writing a blog post: spend 100 hours writing 100 blog posts. Then keep going. People will notice, word will spread, and you’ll find yourself here (or wherever) organically. If your stuff is any good, of course.
- Alex3917 8y agoThat's exactly the problem though; the incentives push people to write a hundred 1-hour blog posts rather than one 100-hour blog post. But everyone would be better off if people just wrote one or two really good posts a year.
- marktani 8y agoI agree with your last sentence, but the natural way to get to write great posts is to hone your skills writing dozens of ok posts first.