(Ed. Note: Many of you may not open your email until after Christmas. At any rate, happy holidays from my garden to yours and thanks very much for your e-patronage this year. I write this blog to keep me sane–a little outlet for my thoughts and ideas. I always look forward to hearing from you and wish you the best gardening season in 2010.)
Today I baked a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake, one of my absolute favorite dessert cheesecakes. But while throwing the ingredients together (albeit from memory), I couldn’t exactly remember the ratio of cream cheese to eggs. Add more eggs and you make a lighter, porous cake. Add less and you create a rich and decadent confection. It was one of those moments where I needed an answer, a yes/no or a one-liner that I could put to use in the kitchen and get on with my day. I needed to click and know something. So I googled for the recipe, found a blog, grabbed the tidbit, closed my browser and boogied my way back to the kitchen accompanied by Mannheim Steamroller playing on the stereo in the dining room.
It wasn’t until later that I realized something. I could have just as easily been looking for the hardiness information of a plant, or any other zippy answer to an otherwise quick, off-hand question. I didn’t feel like reading that blog where I found the tidbit I was looking for, I didn’t care about who wrote it, what her personal story was, why she wrote the blog, or what her credentials were. I just wanted to know something simple, something simple enough to be found in a recipe. Now before we all get up in arms here, let me qualify where I’m coming from.
In my lecture this past fall at the Garden Writers Association symposium, I stressed the importance of “feeding the immediate need,” “answering the quick question,” and “responding to the finger snap,” all the while developing a community around that knowledge and passion for providing it. I’ve had a number of exciting projects rise to the top in the past months, and it’s given me a lot to think about, probably while I’m reflecting on my actions today in the way that I am. What I did today is something that most people do at some level every day. Sometimes we just want a little info–solid expertise that answers a question and nothing more. We want to use, not participate.
The sustainable strategy for us business types that look to source, develop, and provide content rests in finding harmony between our brand of content and a consumer’s value perception of that brand, while understanding that not all consumers behave alike (obviously, someone in my situation today might just as well have spent five minutes reading the whole blog post). But did I care about the brand of that author when I scoured her blog for info today? No. I needed to finish baking a cheesecake so I could get on with gift wrapping. Today, I was a user, not a participant. Today my perception of value was about 15′ long, the distance from my computer back to the mixing bowl. But I wonder what I’ll think about that tidbit tomorrow when my fork sinks into that luscious cheesecake after Christmas dinner. If I got the texture just right, I might think “hmm, glad I looked that up. Wonder what else she’s got to say?” Or I might think “damn, good cheesecake Kel,” and bask in a little self-gloating while I finish my glass of wine. How valuable was that information? More importantly perhaps, how valuable was that information to the outcome of its need? Will it move me to participate or just to use more?
Take home message on this Christmas Eve: Think about your role as content generator and/or consumer. What kind of consumer are you? Do you use or participate? Passive or active? Do you fill out those customer satisfaction surveys, or do you just hope it’ll all work out right? If you generate content, what kind of generator are you? Do you just lob out information in hopes it sticks somewhere or do you find ways to custom tailor information to a specific group of people? Who do you write for and why do they care? Do they want to read a article or just have a question answered? The challenge of course is to answer that question and provide accordingly.
More in this vein of thought in the weeks ahead.
