Audience - not traffic
Reading the latest edition of A Media Operator, a quote that stood out to me on the current troubles of TechCrunch.
TechCrunch didn’t actually have an audience. It had a lot of traffic. If over 90% of your traffic is coming from Google Search and Google News, you are not a sustainable business. You operate at the whims of a platform.
This, x1000.
Now, sure - ensure that your SEO is doing well, so you can get discovered by these platforms.
But, a lot of companies appear to confuse this with “make content that appears in SEO”.
“Why is XXXXXXX not on the radio” is a classic of the genre; with national newspapers falling over themselves to make content whenever Sara Cox goes on holiday. They know that someone might be curious; and they want the traffic.
But, as Jacob Donnelly eruditely points out - that gives you traffic, but it doesn’t give you audience.
And it’s audience you want.