Stock and Flow
I just discovered this article by Robin Sloan thru Chris Bowler. This is exactly the problem I’ve been struggling with and it’s nice to hear someone articulate it so well.
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.
and:
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as inter esting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people dis cover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.
and the problem I’ve been thinking about:
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 tread mill. Well, you can. But then one day you’ll get off and look around and go: Oh man. I’ve got nothing here.
I consider the Stock on my site to be things like my Long Photos and Satellite Beach. It’s the stuff I put time and effort into. Most of my posts are flow, and I worry that a new viewer might think it’s all there is. What to do?
