The Worst Response to Information Overload is Doing Nothing

On October 14, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

As always, Marshall Kirkpatrick has a great post on the Real-Time Web. The post is a precursor to Read/Write Web’s Real-Time Web Summit happening this week, unfortunately at the same time as BlogWorld.

Information Overload

Information Overload

Marshall points out that one of the biggest problem with the Real-Time Web is information overload. This graphic points to two possible outcomes; best case, we learn to filter and the tool set develops to help us filter out the noise and end up with mountains of useful data, the other outcome is one most people take today which is filter out almost everything and end up with only a small amount of useful data.

We’ll get there. And both outcomes are inevitable. We just each need to choose which outcome we’ll take.

But what has me most concerned is the result the Real-Time Web has on companies today, which is doing nothing. There is so much information that even with filters in place people don’t know what to do. They don’t know what the right choice is because there isn’t necessarily a *right* choice.

No one’s done this before. There are no benchmarks or best practices because we’re still inventing them.

Yes, there are some good case studies and there are some basic best practices like “don’t be stupid” or “always be transparent” but those aren’t enough.

To me the, worst thing companies can do is do nothing. If you really want to take advantage of social media and the Real-Time Web then you need to do something. Take action, engage, monitor and adjust as you go. Create your own benchmarks. Create your own best practices. But don’t block out the data and don’t do nothing.

If you can learn anything from the media world today, it’s that doing nothing or worse, fighting the change, is the best way to ensure that you’ll become obsolete.

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Write Great Content. Fragment. Distribute Everywhere.

On September 3, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
Fragmented Content

Fragmented Content

Dave Patton and I have been talking about creating content and then “fragmenting” and re-purposing it. This would allow for the whole story to be found but plan for and receive all the benefits of fragmenting and distributing your content. Write a feature length journalistic story, turn that into a blog post into a tweet, etc.

It dawned on me this morning that HBR has been doing this well for a while. Ironically, I came to the realization while reading the 7 page article on Death by Information Overload. Not having the time right now to read the whole thing, I was debating printing it out or saving it to Evernote when I spotted the “In Brief” version of the story. This is the 5 sentence version of that that same article.  Then they fragment it more and send it out in 140 characters or less on the @HarvardBiz Twitter account.

  • A) I think this is the way all companies should be telling their story. Create one highly leveragable piece of content and then fragment that a million different ways.
  • B) Seems like this business model makes a lot more sense for newspapers than just building a Great Wall of Content. Give away the “In Brief” piece and sell the complete story for those that want that. You get all the traffic (which you can sell ads against) and charge for the full story.

Is anyone else doing this? HBR just gives away both but that’s only one small piece of their overall content business.

BTW, where’s the HBR study of HBR? I’d pay for that.

Photo Credit: Tac Anderson

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