The secret for growing a giant list, revisited

Shayna’s post from a few weeks back, The secret for growing a giant list, asserted that “delivering true value is a secret of communications success that is easy to recognize, but hard to deliver.”  So true.

Adam Singer over at The Future Buzz continues the argument with his post As Your Content Expands, Things Get Easier.  He makes the point that once you have quality content, then there are tons of tools that make it easier for your content to spread and your audience to grow.  They include :

• RSS Feeds make it possible for users to not only subscribe conveniently, but also share with friends through their reader, Digg, Facebook or other social media
• The more content you have, the more likely Google overlords will help your content be found.
• You become the expert on the subject and thus people seek you out with questions and others send visitors your way by linking back to you
• The more content you have, the easier it is to remix, mash-up and highlight things you said two weeks or even two years ago to help your audience in  more, new and interesting ways.

But how do you get to that point?  As Singer points out, “Most people quit too soon because they see the internet as an avenue of instant returns…”  You can’t just write a few posts, or even a few months of posts and really begin to see a return.  

Whether you are a non-profit looking to engage your members or provide quality online resources, a candidate who wants to blog (or twitter) about what’s happening from day to day, or a business trying to increase recognition of your brand or product, the real return comes from a consistent, long term production of quality and relevant content.

Nothing new there, right?

True again.  But as Shayna mentioned it’s hard and as Singer pointed out, many quit or slow down before the get anywhere close to a tipping point.

I guess the real question is how do you persist and push through to see the promised land (AKA an active, engaged audience that can help you accomplish your goal – because you do have one, right)?  Once again, the answer isn’t a secret and is far from stunning:

1. Make sure you actually enjoy what you’re doing.  If the exercise isn’t inherently valuable to you, then it probably isn’t going to be valuable to those whose attention you seek.  Put another way, if you’re not learning, then you’re probably not helping others learn.
2. Remember, unless you find that one crazy idea, you’re idea or post isn’t going viral overnight.   Identify achievable benchmarks along the way to the larger goal – for traffic to your site, new members, followers on twitter – or some other metric to demonstrate your progress.  Aim for those.  Maybe you get lucky, but plan for the slow long haul process of building an audience suited to your longer term goals.  (starting from scratch: 25 visitors or subscribers a day this month, 50 next month, 1000 next year is achievable with work.  500 who are willing to do what you ask in three weeks – probably not.)
3. Build a plan, execute, then evaluate.  Repeat as often as necessary.
4. Don’t stop when it gets hard.   

I didn’t say it was rocket science.  But then again even rocket scientists probably have a similar list to follow when doing work that is difficult.

-Stephen