There was an interview with Chris Anderson about his Long Tail concept and news in the Press Gazette last week. Ian Delaney does a good job of filleting and echoes some thoughts I’d been mulling about news online when he says:
Online, news lasts forever. You could say that the most influential articles online are the short head, and the rest of what gets written is part of the tail. Time – when the piece was written – is only a small part of the equation.
One of the reasons I was thinking along the same lines is I’ve finally finished reading the Long Tail over the past week. It is a great book, and a must-read for communicators and marketers of every hue.
Because whatever the arguments about retail economics and the theory, one place where it is undoubtedly very, very applicable is content, communications and media.
It hit me hardest when I read the last chapter this morning and it began:
“The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives:
1. Make everything available.
2. Help me find it.”
In a nutshell the same advice could well be applied to social media optimisation or just effective online news management – that is making your site more useful to the networks that are important to you.
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