Less (Content) Is More
Interesting post from Kerry Lauerman, Editor in Chief of Salon, via Boing Boing & my friend John Maden, describing the aftereffects of Salon’s shift away from original content and toward aggregation - and the resulting shift back.
But a funny, delightful thing has come out of it all. We ended 2011 on a remarkable high note, with over 7 million unique visitors for the first time, without any giant, viral hits that could be outliers. And now we’ve finished January in similar fashion, at 7.23 million.
Salon cuts blog posts by 30% but increases readership by 40%! boingboing.net/2012/02/08/sal…
— John Maden (@jwmaden) February 8, 2012
There are lessons here for Inbound & Content Marketers. As I’ve been asserting on the Terametric blog, Focus.com and elsewhere, ‘more’ does not necessarily equal ‘better’ when it comes to content, and I strongly suspect that one of the reasons so many corporate blogs are not succeeding and being abandoned is that their focus on quantity over quality has failed.
At the same time, Salon’s experience demonstrates that the opposite is true, and that quality content will draw readership.
The lesson for bloggers (and journalists)?
Write less. Say more.
I think, therefore...
