Your Best Stuff

Seth Godin writes a blog that I enjoy very much because it makes me think. I like to think.

In a recent post titled “Your Best Stuff” he talks about the irony of those “free music cd’s.” Often times, big bands are able to put just one song on the cd and they are faced with a dilemma. What song do you put on?

He goes one to write, “If it’s your best song, and it’s free, then no one will pay to get it from iTunes. And if it’s the best song on the album, maybe no one will buy the album since they already have the song. It’s easy to argue that you should hold back the best song, make people pay for that.”

The problem is that this may be someone’s first time hearing the band. If it’s not a good song, they skip right thru it and never become a paying customer anyway.

This applies to so many things. For instance, I just changed all the RSS feeds that I am in charge of to be the full text instead of just a teaser. Let your readers visit your site because your content is valuable and conversation inducing, not because you tease them there.

There is too much good information out there and if you don’t provide your best stuff up front, then readers (and customers) will find it elsewhere.