8: So What, Part 1
Should I put my head in this here sand?
[This is an installment of a serial article that is being gathered here. -D ]
What I’ve been describing is a disruption to an industry that has only recently achieved a sort of equilibrium from the prior disruption. The ball, the goal posts and the field are all changing; it’s easy to be a little doom-and-gloom about it.
I am not doom-and-gloom about it, in fact I’m excited. This is the fun part, folks. Think about how great it will be to bore your future colleagues with stories about the Post-Covid Inflection. Because let me tell you, we’re in it.
Depending on which part of the neighborhood you’re in, the opportunity that’s being presented by this disruption will be different. And if I can re-use a phrase I use frequently with customers: good decisions are made when you remember the business that you’re in.
“Content on the web” is not a business, at least not by itself, and how we ride this coming wave is going to be defined by how we think about our business. One way, my way, to divide up the “content on the web” world is like this:
Visitor Volume Business
Our goal is to get as many ad impressions every day as possible.
Paid Subscription Business
Our goal is to recruit and maintain an audience of known users that we monetize in some way.
Sales and Reputation
Our goal is to influence opinion about something.Support
Our goal is to help people engage with something successfully.
Sometimes your online presence can include more than one of these— but your strategy should take them individually, because the math is different. Decisions being made by Google will be impactful on VisitorVolume Business in a very different way than a Support site; the move from pull consumption to push represents a set of opportunities unique to the Sales and Reputation people; etc.
Over the next few weeks we’ll dive into each of the models above, and start to gaze into the crystal ball.