6. FLOW
✤ Flow is the feed.
✤ The posts and the
tweets.
✤ It’s the stream of daily
and sub-daily updates
that remind people that
you exist.
7. STOCK
✤ Stock is the durable
stuff.
✤ It’s the content you
produce that’s as
interesting in two
months (or two years)
as it is today.
✤ It’s what people
discover via search.
8. Flow
✤ Can be easy to produce ✤ Can be all consuming
✤ Simple posts and updates ✤ Flow is a treadmill
✤ Linking to other content ✤ Don’t want to spend all of your
time running on a treadmill!
✤ Holding online conversations
within communities ✤ Ultimately without
substantial stock you and
your audience will get
bored
9. Stock is hard work.
✤ Requires thought about presentation and time to produce.
✤ BUT, it is why we originally started doing what we are doing.
Couldn’t be sim­pler, and really, it’s not even that much of an a-ha. There are two kinds of quan­ti­ties in the world. Stock is a sta­tic value: money in the bank, or trees in the for­est
Flow is a rate of change: fif­teen dol­lars an hour, or three-thousand tooth­picks a day.
Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the con­tent you pro­duce that’s as inter­est­ing in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what peo­ple dis­cover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, build­ing fans over time.
I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril. I mean that both in terms of the health of an audience and, like, the health of a soul. Flow is a treadmill, and you can’t spend all of your time running on the treadmill. Well, you can. But then one day you’ll get off and look around and go: Oh man. I’ve got nothing here.
