In the last three to five years we stumbled upon a process we now call blockbuster management. Our blockbuster management program acknowledges that any given basic membership website over time might have thousands of posts, but the remarkable thing is a relatively small number will ultimately be capable of driving 80% of the traffic.
So blockbuster management acknowledges this kind of bestseller phenomenon, like a book publisher’s backlist of evergreen titles. And we play to it. Here are a few ways we do that:
- We identify the blockbusters, we monitor their success, where they’re ranking, how much traffic they’re driving, and how many new subscriber sign-ups we’re getting from each.
- We look at the structure for the blockbusters that are working properly and we try to structure new blockbusters through those guidelines (see our blockbuster scorecard).
- We build them into our regular editorial calendars. For a new website that we’re launching on any given day, 80% of the content might be new and 20% might be blockbusters. As the website matures and the blockbuster list becomes more and more productive over time, those numbers can flip around.
The mistake that most publishers make is they put up too much new content and conversely they don’t spend enough time managing the blockbusters, updating them, republishing them, and re-promoting them.
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