Comitment, Resources, and Expectations: A Layered View

Just like toys for big boys, you need to set your desires and expectations to reflect your resources and commitment / there is no shortage of "wet dream" images to choose from! Harley Davidson seem to "get" the overblown expectation of most "big boys with toy fetish".

In my latest search for "serious new customers" I stumble on situations which seem strange. If I wasn't looking for paying work, this would be interesting (but it's actually frustrating). I get requests from people that simply don't make sense. The one which applies most to technologists and business managers is overblown expectations. Essentially, a product manager wants:

100 article blog in four weeks at a cost of $10 a piece. Each article is original writing with research and promotion wrapped around it. Articles are 500 to 850 words. If a series of articles can be cobbled together, in five to ten at a time, that would be preferable. (actual quote with editing for clarification) 

Apparently you can buy this kind of writing right off the internet from both "legit" and "not-so-legit" sources (i.e. plagiarized, state prisoners, general/non-domain-expert writers in India, etc.) The "unreasonableness" in this example seems to fall into three categories. Each by itself a problem. All three together is what I call ridiculous:

1. Content creation should be free. Not free as in "free speech" but as "free beer". See open source discussions on the difference between "free speech" and "free beer" concept.
2. Content creation should be "instant". Once you think about an idea, and you can articulate the details to a writer (graphic artist, audio editor, videographer), the articles should be available almost immediately. 
3. You can create infinite amount of content, link it to infinite amount of references and sources, and get top Google page rank almost immediately (once you have that free and immediate content). This will result in thousands of "clicks" and great sales.
   

This article is taking a sarcastic tone, but let me assure you, this topic is as serious as it gets. At least for the "guns for hire content creators" point of view. Experience tells us, meeting expectations and setting reasonable resources are usually the first failure point of successful content creation projects. This is especially true for business, and especially marketing content. Most of the cost in developing content is related to the research, definition, and matching targeted content (i.e. message, style, and format) to the business goals. Most marketing managers, with content creation experience not for internet, are familiar with the cost and effort of content creation and promotion. In the past this has been anything from "technical writing" (data sheets, user manuals), to marketing collateral (white papers, sales brochures, case study papers and videos).
Back to the list. Requests for free of cost, immediate, and infinite content essentially reflects the impression of "free" internet content. The thinking seem to go, since the internet is "free", as in free speech, so the content should be free and therefore it should be at least cheap, quick, and easy to create. This idea of completely free of cost content has been discussed in the early days of the internet. The open source movement calls it "as in free beer". Unfortunately we have not been able to "monetize" content in such a way yet.
So how does a business manager estimate the total (or ongoing) cost, amount of time, and actual results? How does someone look at a competitor's blog, or a good mail campaign as an example to his content creator? Most for hire content creators dismiss this issue or simply show some examples of their work. Designers show nice looking pages or e-mail templates. Writers show blogs with a series of articles and nice comment streams. Promoters (SEO, social media) show Facebook page or Twitter accounts with messages and comments. Everyone shows some sort of results from Google Analytics or other type of statistics (see my picture below). But the most helpful way to estimate the work, is actual test run of writing and publishing articles (or pages on a site). While results in real terms (click throughs, page visits, conversion rate), are what businesses need, writing style, subject matter, relevancy to the company's business goal and promotion (where an article is quoted or linked from) are just as important in the long run. Another effective way to start is by planning and analyzing the content landscape. This means going into many sites, reading many blogs, and analyzing the actual content, style, promotion, effectiveness in the field (how many people in the target audience actually read the articles). Good general examples of this use of content in business are blogs by Tim O'Reilly and Seth Godin. Both are well known internet trend reporters. Both write often and are focused on their specific area of expertise. O'Reilly is more technical and represent a large movement. He is also a well established technical publisher. Godin is a long standing reporter and author. He is also a blogger with an interesting approach, he writes short posts on a regular basis. Not always in a stream, yet always on a regular basis (almost daily).

Sratistics of two articles "test" on a small technology product blog. As they say on the mutual fund marketing small print: "past results may not be indicative of future results..." ~ That's life, so look at the actual writing, graphics or video: is it what you need?