According to New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, almost 40 percent of our daily behavior isn't intentional. We don't think about it. We get up, have breakfast, go to work, attend meetings, write email, surf the web, make plans, all without being particularly aware of we are doing. It's just … [Read more...] about Audience Development, Weight-Loss, and ‘The Power of Habit’
The Atlantic’s One Sentence Traffic Growth Secret
With one sentence, The Atlantic Wire changed their editorial direction and, in the last six months, their traffic has exploded. According to digital director, Bob Cohn, this is the secret: "No More Stories That No One Will Read." Simple. Bob Cohn via MediaBistro … [Read more...] about The Atlantic’s One Sentence Traffic Growth Secret
Scary Great Ideas
A few months ago, Paul Graham, founder of the startup incubator YCombinator, wrote that most really big ideas are frightening. He believes that you can tell if you are on the scent of something really ground-breaking by how much anxiety it produces personally and institutionally. This phenomenon is … [Read more...] about Scary Great Ideas
Guidelines for Content Aggregation and Curation
In this week's New York Times, David Carr reports on a new committee to formulate standards for content aggregation. The committee, created by Ad Age columnist Simon Dumenco, has the support of some of the major media websites, but few prominent bloggers. Dumenco decided to form the committee after … [Read more...] about Guidelines for Content Aggregation and Curation
How Products (And Ideas) Find Users
Every campaign is unique, from a new product launch to a membership drive -- but wouldn't it be great if there were some general principles that govern success or failure? Maybe there are. They come from a fifty-year-old textbook called "The Diffusion of Innovations," by Everett M. Rogers. Rogers … [Read more...] about How Products (And Ideas) Find Users
The Five Traits of Successful Digital Products
Everett M. Rogers, author of "The Diffusion of Innovations," studied the adoption of new technologies and attempted to identify why people choose to use new products. According to Rogers, any product that lacks all of the traits will find significant difficulty in attracting users. Advantage: Your … [Read more...] about The Five Traits of Successful Digital Products
How to Write for Gawker
Stumbled across an old but interesting memo from Gawker Media writer Paul Boutin to managing editor Noah Robischon (which was immediately leaked to New York Magazine's Vulture site). Valleywag (a Gawker sister site) then reported on the leak, linking to NYMag and running the piece themselves. Here … [Read more...] about How to Write for Gawker
Lessons in Social Media – Guy Kawasaki
If you are searching for a model of how to integrate social media and content -- Twitter, Facebook and websites, Guy Kawasaki deserves some attention. Here are three versions of a story aggregated from ReadWriteWeb. Guy (actually a blogger who works for Guy, named Catherine Faas), serves up the … [Read more...] about Lessons in Social Media – Guy Kawasaki