Create, Publish, Exploit, Analyse - The 4 Essential Elements For Digital Content

Publishing a novel this year taught me that there’s more to being a writer than writing. I learned that there are four basic elements of all forms of publishing: Create, Publish, Exploit, Analyse.

Create 

This is the basic one. Do the work. Some people find the first part easy. Writers, typically. Photographers, musicians, creative people.  

Publish

Other people focus on publishing. They love to produce. Bloggers, podcasters, people in PR - innovators who aren't afraid of getting it wrong and are happy to fail fast.

Exploit

This one is my weakness element. Marketeers tend to be masters of exploitation, and I mean that with the greatest of respect. They take products and they bus the hell out of them. It takes a special type of person to promote their own content and they sometimes called a lot worse than Marketeers. By nature I am a Creator, and I'm getting better at publishing. Between 2004 and and 2012 I kept a blog, or maybe it kept me, and during the high water mark I was writing maybe 60,000 words a year. I was happy just to write and publish but never really Exploited it.

It wasn't really a goal of mine because I wasn't writing anything I would have like to see reach a wider audience. Exploiting has become more important now that I have Created and Published a book. I need to Exploit its advantages, starting with a few questions and assumptions. "Water Runs Slow Through Flat Land is a thriller about a digital journalist who gets caught up in the war on terror. It's the kind of book I'd like to read, so where does someone like me find out about new books? So in which LinkedIn groups, social and personal or professional networks would I be able to find potential readers?" This is how a Creator and Publisher needs to think and it doesn't always come naturally.

Analyse

Always study your results. As someone who has spent nearly two decades in digital publishing and more than half of that in News, I know that analysing results is vital to the publishing process, and it's ingrained into online tools. Whether is live feedback of engagement when you change a word in a headline, or longer term measurements on what channels are getting the most benefit from your marketing efforts. 

As well a cold hard numbers, it's important to look at value when you analyse your product. If you're getting modest sales but annoying everyone in your social circles about your book, you need to change your strategy before you damage your reputation. A great content strategy requires effort in all three disciplines. Whether you do it yourself or each area is covered by separate individuals, teams or even individual companies, the Stop Drop and Roll of digital content is Create, Publish, Exploit and Analyse.  

The Kindle edition of Water Runs Slow Through Flat Land is available for free  in the UK and in the US on 24 and 25 August.

This post was inspired by retired US General Stanley McChrystal's explanation F3EA, or "Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, and Analyze". The Old Man recently made the jump into civilian life and is making a lot of impact in the business world. Read the full article on WSJ.com