Content Déjà Vu, Again
Is there a glitch in the Matrix of digital content?
If you haven’t played with Product Hunt yet, you may wish to look away because I can promise that you’ll become hooked. Time does not function normally once you enter Product Hunt territory. Consider yourself warned.
Product Hunt is a bit difficult to classify. Is it a platform to discover new and trending startups? Is it a community of “product guys” who are, as one, the curatorial voice of the best available web, mobile, and software products? Is it a nascent exchange where VCs and Angels can eye and (one day perhaps) fund the next ‘big thing’? Or is it, as Tom Limongello writes in Pando Daily, “an OS agnostic app store in the making?”
Product Hunt co-creator Nathan Bashaw, in Limongello’s article, remarks that “[Product Hunt] is more of a user-centric focus. A mac app that you find on Product Hunt may not be world changing, but it might be really useful.” Product Hunt’s own About page describes itself as a place “for product people — a community of enthusiasts that love to share, discover, and geek out about interesting new products. Each day, contributors post and discuss their latest product discoveries.”
Here’s the riddle: How does a thing that’s part platform, part community, part discussion board, and part daily digest newsletter—which is to say, a thing without a clear product-market identity (at least in conventional terms)—develop a cult-like popularity in less than three months? Technology aside, it appears that Product Hunt’s rapid fandom was catalyzed in large measure from what I’ll call a content déjà vu strategy.
Enter Ryan Hoover, the other Product Hunt co-creator.
Hoover, like Joel Gascoigne of Buffer, publishes a lot of great content that provides refreshing transparency into his creations, decision-making process, and workflow. “How We Got Our First 2,000 Users Doing Things That Don’t Scale” is one such article. The article was originally published on Fast Company’s Co.Labs blog.
Apart from providing further credence that hustle begets success more than anything else, the article revealed to me a curious pattern: Hoover published the exact same article on his personal site, RyanHoover.me, the very next day. (See here.) The appropriate “This article was originally published on FastCo.” statement was appended to the end. Given status quo sentiments and terms about exclusivity of original work from mainstream content publishers like Fast Company and other serious providers, I found this occurrence extraordinary.
The more I followed Hoover’s new content and studied his previously published pieces, the more I observed this content repurposing pattern. Consider Hoover’s article “Nostalgia: A Product Designer’s Secret Weapon.” The article was originally published on Pando Daily, republished on Hoover’s personal site the following day, made its way to Medium, and found another home on the blog of his friend Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products (Amazon book link), which Hoover contributed to and edited.
Speaking of Eyal, he wrote a great article titled “You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users,” which was adapted from his book, published on LifeHacker, and republished on Hoover’s site two days later. Apparently, he too sees the value in this pattern of content re-distribution. And he and Hoover aren’t the only two.
James Clear applies behavior science to his writings about positive habit formation and transformation, disciplines useful in improving your productivity and health. He publishes a wealth of articles at his personal site, JamesClear.com. Some articles are syndicated to Buffer’s blog, such as his article The Habits of Successful People: They Do The Painful Things First, which was originally published here.
Paul Jarvis is another case study. Jarvis is a decorated web designer and best-selling author. He publishes thoughtful articles on his website, Pjrvs.com; via his email newsletter; and across a number of acclaimed web properties like The Next Web and 99U. He, like Hoover, also republishes some of his articles on Medium and other sites. For example, Jarvis’ thorough examination of his self-publishing experiences was published both on his own site and Fizzle’s Sparkline blog.
Content repurposing is nothing new. But there are several extraordinary and consistent elements among these examples that defy traditional web content and new-media dogma;
First, major sites like Fast Company and Pando Daily seem perfectly tolerant of such republishing, where even two years ago that practice was largely heralded as taboo. Second, content repurposing used to be more commonly observed among less-than-stellar content creators employing black-hat tactics, where now credible subject matter experts with established integrity are reimagining the practice in value-add, white-hat-esque form. Third, search engine optimization (SEO) as gospel appears to have taken a permanent backseat to audience and fan engagement anywhere they congregate. And fourth, to apply Eyal’s Hooked Model, more content creators seem to have awoken to the understanding that relationships with readers and customers are galvanized and made indelible through a perpetual (and at times repetitive) loop of satisfying triggers and rewards (e.g. good content) pollinated across user experiences.
Ultimately, this modern incarnation of content repurposing—content déjà vu—isn’t about low-end, boilerplate, empty-calorie content engineered for mindless clicks; It’s about high-end, in-depth, thought-provoking content handcrafted for mindful engagement to earn the fandom of readers anywhere they exist. And these case studies are no longer data points to be explained away as glitches in the Matrix of web and new-media content; Rather, they’ve become a trend that may be best appreciated as a refactoring of the Matrix itself—a significant paradigm shift about how we create, discover, and consume digital content.
Originality still matters, of course, but the original publishing source of a piece (or collection) of content seems to matter far less. And content creators such as Hoover seem to put their faith more in the power of their loyal audiences than in the power of their Google Page Rank—a metric in peril of becoming pure vanity. Remember Hoover’s article “Nostalgia: A Product Designer’s Secret Weapon?” The version published on his own site doesn’t even rank on the first page of Google results for that precise headline. In context of how well Product Hunt and his own renown have grown, does that matter?
Clearly, the measures of success for digital content are changing with a stronger-than-ever bias toward reader-centric values.
This content paradigm shift is being taken a step further by innovative writing and publishing platforms like Snippet. (Disclosure: I consult with the Snippet team.) Snippet offers an easy way to unleash stories directly into the hands of readers without the costs and sacrifices of publishing a conventional book or pursuing a protracted media opportunity. Publishing with Snippet is simple. Copyrights are retained. Monetization (if desired) is easy. And Snippet’s reading experience is one-of-a-kind and provides unprecedented levels of reader engagement.
Snippet can be a valuable tool for content creators that wish to distribute existing work into a new marketplace and in an enhanced format. In fact, Hoover and Jarvis both did precisely that. Hoover repurposed some of his Startup Edition publication content into a Startup Edition Snippet series. Jarvis created a Snippet version of his book Eat Awesome.
Other respected content creators like Jeff Goins have used Snippet to make and share derivative works. In Goins’ case, he published an audience-centric story titled The In-Between: Shared Experiences, which served as a companion piece to his traditionally published book, The In-Between. Others still, like Pat Flynn with Let Go, have used Snippet first to publish an original work to then later republish it via other channels.
Snippet isn’t the only startup advancing this content paradigm shift. Big players like Medium and Svbtle (recently opened to all) are popular choices to repurpose web content, publish derivative work, or be the home base of original content. Additionally, Byliner and Creativist both provide new ways to package and distribute digital content, each with different cost and revenue models. While each is distinct, they are all contributing to the groundswell of repurposed and derivative content being published by progressive and savvy creators to cultivate ever-increasing fan-bases.
Concluding that user/reader engagement is the entire utility of such a content déjà vu strategy may be easy and expected. However, I feel that’s incomplete. Let’s remember the insight Nathan Bashaw offered about Product Hunt’s identity—that Product Hunt has “…a user-centric focus.” User-centric doesn’t mean user engagement alone. User-centric means understanding and respecting users’ inherent differences and thus adapting the delivery of value to them in accord with those differences. Such sensitivity isn’t about trying to please everybody, and consequently pleasing nobody. Instead, it’s about respecting the diversity within a given fan-base and serving those interests relentlessly.
People learn via different means, favor different news sources, and live within different contexts shaped by different circumstances, habits, needs, and instincts. Thus, publishing a single piece of content in different outlets at different times and in different forms or derivations respects the differences of the reader. Consequently, doing so increases the balance of probability that one instance or variance of the content will be discovered by and appeal more to a particular reader. The magic happens when those stars align—engagement blossoms into mutual appreciation and advocacy, all thanks to the reimagining of value-rich content repurposing.
Product Hunt committed to sharing such value-rich content with fans and influencers from its infancy. By publishing that content far and wide, more readers were able to discover the idea of Product Hunt, try the product, and develop trust with the creators. A one-dimensional content funnel this is not; it’s a web of interwoven and overlapping stories told through diverse reading experiences. It may evoke a few déjà vu moments for some readers, but they won’t mind. They’ll just keep on being hooked and rooting you on.
