Publishers & New Media: If You Build A Context, They Will Come…

If you just crank out content, they might come for a while but they will eventually move on until they find a nice, cozy context. Or a context that produces the results and benefits they are looking for.

I’ve said it before (somewhere, I can’t find it at the moment), content might be king, but context is queen.

And, as is so often the case, the queen usually wins. 🙂

Dan Blank wrote an interesting post today about how newspapers used to be a service. I asked for his thoughts on newspapers as a context vs. content producers.

Because, for me, newspapers used to be a context delivered to your door. But now they have to compete with so many other contexts that can be delivered in so many ways through your phone or iPad or laptop or whatever, that newspapers, which have been slow or clunky in making the transition, are losing the edge they once had in luring us in and keeping us nice and happy on a Sunday morning.

And we have SO many types of context these days. It’s like a circus of choices.

Check out these writer-centric examples:

A Writer’s Conference is a context (Look at what Digital Book World is doing)

The Bookstore is a context (Look at Amazon or Powell’s)

Magazines are now a context (Like Writer’s Digest)

School was always a context but the extension of schools using distance learning give every school more reach (the Vermont College’s MFA program comes to mind)

Heck, even my bank is now a worldwide context (and every other bill I pay each month has their own context, as well)

But comes the context rub: with so many contexts competing for our energy and attention, some of them are going to fade away. The average human being simply cannot care for her children, maintain a career, enjoy personal intimate relationships, and indulge in a few real life simple pleasures if she spends every second of her time online jumping from context to context.

And that’s if she can remember all those passwords.

Now notice that this post is directed to publishers and new media. It’s not directed to writers because I don’t suggest individual writers attempt to create contexts of the size and scope that corporations and businesses create.

I got out of the context business last year and it’s been a huge relief. Guy Gonzalez got into the context business last year but he is a full-time employee and I presume he makes a decent salary for all of his tireless and amazing hard work.

Writers, you have to remember what business you are in. You simply can’t compete with huge corporations or even-medium sized businesses that create intricate, technologically sophisticated contexts.

For me, I’m in the writing business. I write. I teach writing and writing-related skills. I speak on writing and writing-related topics. I am actually something of a creative career expert since I’ve been doing this stuff for almost a decade.

Therefore, when I create contexts, they are necessarily temporary. They are temporary because I don’t have a staff. I can’t afford a staff. And it takes a staff to build and maintain a context (for example, here’s a roundup of the bloggers for Writer’s Digest).

I’ll say more about ways that writers can use context strategies for success soon. But in the comments this time, I’d love to you list all the online contexts you visit in the average week. And then tell us if your time investment is sustainable.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we all shared this? (Feel free to use general rather than specific terms, if you prefer.) Context-friendly strategies for writers, next time.

~ Photo by Dustin Diaz