Author / Matt Locke

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  • Broken: Rule 5 – Build Your Own Archive

    We’ve now reached the last day of our mini-series of rules for the new era of content discovery. A refresher on the rules so far: 1 – Focus on audience, not platforms 2 – Focus on value propositions, not your brand 3 – Find your niches 4 – Build content formats that become habits And now we have rule…

  • Broken: Rule 4 – Build Content Formats That Become Habits

    We’re now at day four of our mini-series on the rules for our new content discovery era. We’ve looked at understanding audience attention, developing your value proposition, and targeting niches to build your audience. Now we are going to look at how you can build audience loyalty: Rule 4 – Build content formats that become habits One of…

  • Broken: Rule 3 – Find Your Niches

    We’re now on part three of our five-day mini-series sharing five rules to succeed in the new era of content discovery. We’ve looked at understanding audience attention, and developing a value proposition; today’s rule combines the two into a focused content strategy: Rule 3 – Find your niches We’re big fans of The Rebooting, a newsletter about…

  • Broken: Rule 2 – Focus on Value Propositions, not Your Brand

    Welcome to the second part of our five-part mini-series on rules for the new era of content discovery. After focusing on audiences in rule one, for rule two we’re looking at what you can offer them as a content publisher: Rule 2 – Focus on value propositions, not your brand There is already far too much…

  • Broken: Rule 1 – Focus on Audiences, not Platforms

    Welcome to the first of our five-part mini-series on how to succeed in the next era of content discovery. Our first rule sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people forget it. Rule 1 – Focus on audiences, not platforms This sounds simple, but it’s almost the opposite of what a lot of people…

  • Broken: Part 3 – Search Engine Traffic is Broken

    This week, we’re looking at how search is broken, but before we start, I just want to break down what we mean by ‘search’. When we talk about ‘search’ in the context of digital content, we’re really talking about three things – search as a product, an audience behaviour, and a business growth model. The…

  • Broken: Part 2 – Social Discovery is Broken

    First of all, thank you to everyone who voted or commented on our first post in this series. Overwhelmingly, 88% of people responding to the poll said that they thought content discovery through search and social was either not working, or they were seeing engagement dropping off. We also had a great comment from Suw Charman-Anderson, who has…

  • Broken: Part 1 – Discovery is Broken

    Earlier this year I wrote a short series for Attention Matters called ‘So, what do these numbers really mean?’. The idea was to dive into the cultural and social history of key digital metrics to understand what they were really measuring, and how we can use them in smarter ways to gauge the impact of…

  • So what do these numbers really mean?

    Subscriptions: So. What Do These Numbers Really Mean?

    When we were discussing this series at Storythings, I thought it would be nice to summarise my deeply nerdy interest in the cultural history of metrics into a neat little series. But almost as soon as I started writing it, I realised that it wasn’t really a guide or toolkit, but an epitaph. The metrics…

  • So what do these numbers really mean?

    Shares: So. What Do These Numbers Really Mean?

    As the saying goes, if you love something, set it free. Or at least, post it on your socials so your friends can see it and you can get some sweet sweet engagement. Sharing is the most sought after and valuable of all digital metrics, because it is really three things bound up in one…