Seth Godin:
If you run a media company (and you do—you publish regularly on all sorts of social media, don’t you?) then it’s worth two minutes to consider some basic groundrules, listed here for you to embrace or reject.
One of the best bits of advice for writing this site I stole from this Macworld podcast where John Gruber answers a question about why Daring Fireball is comment free:
I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read.
Writing for the second version of me was such a great way to get momentum to my publishing routine — it helped me to find my voice, and it continues to serve as the perfect litmus test for if I should or shouldn’t link to something, or if I’m going to spend time writing a review of an app or gadget.
But writing for the second version of me doesn’t answer every question that comes up in the day-to-day of writing and publishing. Questions like: What should I do when something is interesting to me but I don’t have anything to add to the conversation about it? Or: How often should I mention that this site is primarily funded by paying members?
Some questions you have answer ahead of time and then do your best to be consistent about. Because they’re not questions of style or schedule or voice, they’re questions about principles and values.