Building a content project: team - chicken or egg?

If you read somewhere an analytical article with the words “content is the most valuable resource of the Internet,” think before you rush into this niche - is it really valuable because there are few people who can extract it? Think there are other niches - services, affiliate programs and more. If you firmly decided to work and earn it on a content resource, then this article is for you.

In this case, saying “content”, I mean primarily texts. It just so happened that my main professional income was my writing in one form or another. For five years in this area I have passed positions from a freelance author and an ordinary newsman to a project manager, editor-in-chief and media consultant. And accordingly, I have accumulated some experience, or rather, practical advice that I would like to share. For a couple of materials, the topics will be typed, and there, if there is interest, you will be prompted to give you the motives for continuing.

Ab ovo

I would like to start my first article on building and organizing content resources with the main thing - the project team, the so-called journalistic team.
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When working on a project or analyzing a stranger, it was common to see business plans, where the “content” part is spelled out according to the principle “1) we hire so many people / we pay so much money; 2) we write so many articles and news; 3) ... 4) we get such and such attendance (profit!) ”Between what is meant by this ellipsis and what you really have to fill it in when working on a project, there is a huge difference.

UPD Article is well received, and will continue. But I write very slowly, so I have an idea to record a podcast on this topic. But I am not a podcaster once, although I can “speak”. There are willing to help with the technical side of the question? My profile contacts.

As it happens

Usually it is supposed (here it is important to clarify that here and hereinafter “usually” I will mean projects in which texts are an important component, but there are no real professionals in this topic and the concept is defined by a person of almost any level of competence, education, literacy) ... - so, it is usually assumed that a certain number of texts in themselves magically ("...") is converted into a certain number of readers. An indirect proof of the prevalence of such a misconception in RuNet is the number of sites in which the texts are hidden behind the “articles” line in the menu - excluding purely general cases when the people do not expect the texts to be read, sincere conviction , that having seen the word "articles", the user will certainly go to this page and begin to read. The same magic, in principle.

Actually, Cap suggests, everything is simpler - in order for a person to take some action, he must be interested in him (and in order to rate an interest, he must understand what awaits him if he clicks there or here - but leave this topic to usabilityists. Let's talk about interest.).

What is "interesting"

Interesting texts are primarily interesting authors. This is where most content projects, especially content projects “with ambitions”, break off. They write a beautiful concept, draw up a business plan, rent an office and hire designers with programmers to pile up a pretty shell, and start looking for people to fill it with content. And this is good even if they try to type the editorial board, and not just search for freelancers. volunteers who are ready to write for "100 rubles per thousand characters without spaces." This example is already from the category of clinical, but real nonetheless. I've been in such startups. When I voiced how much really good text costs, they looked at me with horror: how, for some little letters, so many attendants? The fact that around these little letters is their whole beautiful project and should be built, as a rule, passes by the consciousness of effective managers who come from any field of activity other than the media one.

But let us consider a more normal situation: when the project manager himself is also not necessarily a media worker, he understands that a team is needed, and begins to form it. What are the pitfalls here?

The first, and the main, even if you collect 5 people who can write coherently, without mistakes, and even worked in some kind of media outlets (maybe even not for long, in very good ones), you will not mean that you have a journalistic team.

How to build a team

This team, which can rightfully be called the editors, is united by the idea. In the broadest sense - as a manner of perceiving the world and transmitting its feelings to the reader, common values. If you have noticed (and if you have favorite publications that you read for at least 3 years in a row, then you have noticed), every good publication has its own language of communication with the reader. It happens, almost the entire editorial board is replaced, and the founding fathers of the language themselves leave — and the tradition remains. This is formed over the years. Or - if a team of like-minded people was originally taken for the project.

And this is the most important, in my opinion, conclusion of this article - for the sake of which I sat down to write it: the best content project is the one that is based not on the concept, business plan and cool second-level domain, but the team that wants to do it. That is, from the point of view of an investor who does not understand anything about this topic, giving money for a “concept” should be dumb, no matter how glossy it is. Money should be given to people. This is the perfect option. What if there is no such option, and the project should be done?

Need an idea. A very important point that many editorial staffs are missing is the formation of a properly thought-out editorial policy. Even if the most general document - what we write about, what we don’t write about, who our reader is, what language we speak to him - is very important. Gradually, in working order, he will become overgrown with layers - in addition to “what we write”, there will appear “how we write”, up to the rules for writing texts and constructing phrases, and other working moments. These rules can be formal - in this case, they should be prescribed at the concept stage, and people should be recruited for them (do we need to talk about the professionalism of the headhunters who should do this work?). But more often it is still an unwritten code, the carrier of which can be just one person - the chief editor of the project. Those. if you are not ready to sit down and formulate even the most general and formal requirements for the redpolitik, and even less sure that your girls, yesterday's graduates, something-there-a-today-managers-in-staff are able to find suitable ones for these requirements People, better find the main editor. One. That would suit you at least at the level of human understanding and an adequate way of thinking. And then entrust the rest of the work to him. It would seem, obviously? Well, yes, large and successful projects started like this - from relatively fresh ones, take the very “ Slon.ru ” that was built - and built! - Leonid Bershidsky. And at the level of a lower and simpler one, from which many glorious projects, including many now glorious, have started, not always. Again, there are examples of “editions” where “content managers” sit and even write something, but there’s no editor-in-chief. In some rather big projects, they have not appeared for years, the management function in such cases is assumed by the collective mind (if the “content managers” are ready and able to compose it), if not the management. The CEO-part-time-chief-editor is trash, but it happens.

What to choose

Summarizing: so, there are only three scenarios for organizing content projects:

1. the ideal is a team, a unique journalistic team, and an idea that they can take up;
2. possible - there is an idea, there is a good media manager (editor-in-chief) who is ready to assemble such a team from scratch and form a unique journalistic team, which is further described in the previous paragraph.
3. the usual - there is an idea, there is just a manager (maybe very good in some other, but not the media field) and, to the best of his abilities, he is recruiting a certain team that does a certain project.

The third way is the most common, but not a dead end. It is possible that the team will grow together, the editorial staff will grow, and everything will work out for the project. But - here you need to understand this moment - the chances of such an outcome are, at best, one to nine. If this is understood, then everything is fine - but how many leaders would risk writing in the business plan "... and in one case out of ten - profit!"? But in reality the way it happens is that one well-gone content project, with an application for a strong ministry, or even a grandeur of the media sphere, has dozens of closed or lousy existence of “one more content project” sites.

And point 3) of the above-mentioned scheme, "...", for such projects, the content is not filled with the magic formula for the content -> readers, but with the purchase of traffic, jeans, gray and black seo, contextual advertising, affiliate programs and other things common for many resources . What are the ambitions here?

PS

Next, I plan to continue on the topic of building news feeds, talk a little about articles and prices, rerate-copy and how to cook them, organizational aspects of building newsrooms and, perhaps, the main thing - how to write. But this is in the following articles. Ask questions, ask for help and advice.

Pps

The text is large and was written in one breath, so thanks in advance for pointing out the studs and achepyatki - only in a personal, pliz. On kraynyak can write to the mail :)