10 Tips for Making Better Content Without Going Broke or Insane

Before I made a living in social marketing, I made social media.  (Yes, there’s a difference.)

In 2003, I launched Something to Be Desired (or STBD), a creative outlet that eventually became the web’s longest-running sitcom.  The series remained active until 2009 when I moved to Baltimore and the cast remained in Pittsburgh.

Despite its critical acclaim (including a nomination for Best Series in the 2008 Yahoo! Video Awards), the show was never a household name by Internet standards.  The reasons we never quite “made it” are numerous, and since the topic of creating meaningful content has been on a lot of people’s minds lately, I think those lessons are worth sharing.

While STBD remains indefinitely on hiatus, awaiting the right opportunity to be rejuvenated and / or properly concluded, I hope the lessons I learned during the show’s first 6 years of existence can help other content creators avoid the pitfalls that so often lead to frustration, disappointment and failure.  (Not that failure is always bad; but I digress…)

10 Tips for Creating Successful (and Sustainable) Web Content

1. Keep It Simple.

When STBD began, it was derived from a 60-minute script I’d written, which we subdivided into 5 shorter chapters. It was the story of Jack Boyd, although he was primarily a passive observer in his own life. The show had 8 recurring characters, a few extras, and was filmed exclusively in locations where we had direct and unquestioned access (with one huge exception; see tip #3).

By 2009, we were producing a new 5 to 10 minute episode every week, drawn from a cast of 15 recurring characters and another two dozen veterans who’d left the show but still made occasional guest appearances.  We filmed all around the Pittsburgh area, at all times and days of the week, which made scheduling so many (unpaid) actors a nightmare.

Despite the increased breadth of the show, many longtime viewers still cite our first few seasons as our most narratively coherent years, partly because the show was then focused on a smaller cast and a simpler plot.

Growth can be good, but don’t grow faster than necessary or you’ll lose time, energy and focus.

2.  Tell the Story That No One Else Can.

As a former college radio DJ, my experiences on-air and behind the scenes were the inspiration for the creation of STBD.  Jack Boyd was a radio DJ, and the success or failure of his ever-struggling station was the overarching catalyst behind many of the show’s plot twists.

But I also knew that by offering viewers a glimpse inside a world they themselves would rarely experience — even something as seemingly mundane as a radio station — it would keep them interested in seeing “what happened next” in a social circle they’d never otherwise be able to peer into.

When you consider other forms of media, from TV and movies to podcasts and blogs, ask yourself: which media do I consume because it invites me into a world, a job, a topic or a personality that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to?  There are plenty of reasons why creations like Mad Men, Achewood, Homestar Runner and Dooce have been so successful, but part of their charm is their inability to be replaced by inferior imitations.

Be original, because anything less is replaceable.

3.  Adapt.

STBD began as the story of Jack Boyd, his workplace, his friends and his city.

Then a funny thing happened: the actor who played Jack left the show (and the city).

So we adapted the concept.  We shifted the focus to Jack’s closest friends, and told their story of “life after college.”  As long as we still had the radio station as our anchor, we had a subtle branding element that would tie the various themes together.

Then, three years into production of STBD, the radio station we filmed at came under new management and we were informed that we were no longer allowed on the premises.

So we adapted again.

STBD now became the story of Jack’s sister Caroline and her roommate, Dierdre, each of whom got new jobs (in new, more reliable locations) to open the show’s 4th season.  The central theme of “life after college” was still intact, but now we’d lost all tangible reference to the show’s initial concept.  And yet, as long as we had a past, we knew the show could have a future.

When your success hinges on the whims of your audience, your sponsors or your collaborators, always remain flexible.

4.  Provide an Entry Point for All New Visitors.

From TV shows to comics, whenever I first dive into a new (to me) serialized creation, I always start with the episode or issue at hand.  I like to know how interesting the creation is now, and then I’ll backtrack as necessary to figure out any plot holes or character questions I may have.  For me, half the fun of exploring a long-running creation is understanding how it’s changed over the years, and experiencing plot twists and character growth out of order.

Evidently, I’m a rarity.

By an overwhelming margin, new viewers of STBD almost always decide to begin at the beginning.  Never mind that we’d been online for years, or that we’d produced more than 25 hours of content over the course of 150+ episodes, or that our most recent episodes bear scant resemblance to anything from our early days; humans are apparently hardwired to begin at the beginning and work their way forward.

This was always a problem for us, because our series is so different from season to season.  Newbies would poke their heads in, get confused, then overwhelmed, and flee.  Or they’d wade in at the beginning, be underwhelmed by our creative juices from 6 years ago, and leave without bothering to fast-forward to the present and see how we’d improved.

When producing content for the long-term, always make sure that your roots remain relevant. Otherwise, you’ll need a fresh introduction that brings people up to speed quickly, or perhaps an entire re-brand to divorce yourself from your history.  Because online, time is precious and playing catch-up always feels like work.

5.  “Not Starving” Isn’t the Same Thing as “Selling Out.”

We never made a dime on STBD.  Yes, we earned a few dollars off donations, t-shirt sales and other incidentals, but the sum total of that income was never more than a few hundred dollars.  Over the course of those 6 years, the only things that kept the show afloat were my own invested income and the graciousness of the cast to labor without pay.

Granted, making STBD was (usually) fun, which helps alleviate the sting of working for free.  But not paying a cast means not being able to complain when their schedules get complicated by paying work.  And not actively pursuing advertising revenue, sponsors, partnerships and merchandise sales meant that we’d never generate enough independent income to pay anyone — or to replace damaged equipment, purchase props, license music, or do any of the things we’d like to have done in order to keep the show growing.

You don’t have to say “yes” to every monetary offer that comes your way.  But you do need to budget for success, and pursue avenues of revenue that will ensure your creation can stay afloat on its own power.

Trust me: there’s no shame in not starving.

6.  Be Consistent.

Audiences want quality media delivered to them in a timely fashion.  Ideally, they want the same thing at the same time in the same place, for as long as they find it interesting.

“But this is the web,” you may think to yourself in a moment of misguided anarchy.  “Time is irrelevant; Google is always.”

Yes, Google is always.  But Google needs to find something when it goes looking for you, and so do the people who enjoy your content enough to subscribe to it.  If you miss enough self-declared deadlines (as we did), it’s an excuse for your audience to take you less seriously, and to make them think twice before recommending your work to someone else.

7.  Get Ahead.

Once you master the art of producing quality on a regular basis, you’ll want to get ahead.  The more free time you have away from production, the more effort you can invest in promotion; otherwise, you spend all your time producing work that never gets seen.

On STBD, we were rarely ahead in any capacity.  We frequently filmed Monday’s episode on Sunday night, and I was up overnight editing it before passing out on the couch.  Not a good way to instill self-discipline, much less to keep enough energy in the tank to promote the show adequately.

If I’d been smarter about producing STBD, I would have written multiple scripts (or even an entire season’s worth) in advance, and then filmed and edited the bulk of the show before any of that season’s episodes aired.  Then we wouldn’t have been at the mercy of weekly schedules, we wouldn’t have had plotlines that dangled for months on end while we tried to sew them up, and I wouldn’t have lost sleep patching holes in plots and coverage that wouldn’t have existed if we’d had more lead time.

If you love something, do it right.

8.  Promote, Promote, Promote.

If you’re spending all your time producing media, you’ll never have time to promote it.  That means everyone’s investing their energies producing content that’s unlikely to be seen, because you don’t have the same dedication to sharing your work as you do in perfecting it.

Despite a healthy following on MySpace (yes, MySpace), the occasional front-page recommendation by YouTube or Yahoo! Video, and a dedicated group of longtime fans, we rarely promoted STBD with any efficiency, urgency or consistency.  I always knew what I would do if I had the time, but then I perpetually failed to provide myself with the time I needed.

Yes, ideally, your content is so amazing that it speaks for itself and the world becomes your word-of-mouth oyster.  But realistically, you’re producing media that’s roughly as good as anyone else’s, give or take.  Your work won’t succeed unless people are talking about it, and the first person who needs to talk about it is you.

Repeatedly.

9.  Listen, Listen, Listen… to a Point.

When your fans and trolls speak up, you should listen.  Just make sure you strain their praise or criticism through the filters of their personality in order to find any real, actual, objective information.  Your goal here is to discover what is or isn’t working for your audience and why, not to be told you’re wonderful or horrible.  (You do that yourself already.)

But the people who love (or hate) your work aren’t always able to articulate why.  Maybe they’re too busy, or too disinterested, or too embarrassed to engage you directly.  This is where surveys and forums come in handy.  This is why metrics, analytics and data need to be reviewed, and choices made based on the unspoken habits of your audience.

And yet, in the end, you need to create media because you enjoy the process of that creation.  Success is something we’re always pursuing, but the external validation of a raving audience pales in comparison to knowing that you produced something you’re proud of, traffic and ad rates be damned.

10.  Know When to Quit.

When you first start creating a new piece of media, it helps to have an idea of what “the end” might look like.  If it’s a self-contained story or experience, you know when it’s over.  If, like a blog or a podcast, it’s a living, breathing, ongoing experiment, the end can be a bit less definitive.

Maybe it’s over when it becomes too hard to continue.  Maybe it’s over when you’re out of money, or when no one else is listening.

When you no longer enjoy the act of creating something, it’s definitely over.

I often wonder if we shouldn’t have ended STBD years ago.  For us, it could have been over when Jack left, or when the radio station was written out, or when the process of organizing and executing a weekly episode took more effort to pull off than our day jobs did.  And it absolutely could have ended when I moved to a different state, four hours away from the rest of the cast.

But it hasn’t.

Not yet, anyway.  And when it does, it won’t be because anyone else has decided it’s over.

That’s the one lesson you have to learn for yourself.

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Tags: audience, Business, inspiration, personal, Pittsburgh, pop culture, Social Media, Something to Be Desired, stbd, video