The New Coke Blog Post
| Share |
Do you remember New Coke?
I sure do. New Coke was supposed to be better than sliced bread. It was going to take the world by storm. It was going to push Coke to the top of the Cola Wars, crush Pepsi under its feet and propel Coke into the next Century.
The only problem is that it flopped. No one bought it. People wrote letters to the company complaining. They didn’t like the taste of New Coke. They wanted their old Coke back.
So, what did Coca-Cola do? They gave their customers what they wanted, right? They changed Coke back to old Coke, yes?
No. Determined that new Coke was the future, they continued to sell it. They re-released old Coke under the moniker “Coca Cola Classic.” Within months, New Coke sales were almost zero. The company shut down its production and sales of New Coke.
Now, what the heck does this have to do with blogging? Well, to start with, your blog is a product. You might sell something else, or you might make money through affiliate or ad sales. But your blog – more specifically, the things you write in your blog – are the product that brings your readers back again and again.
Let’s say you come up with an awesome idea for a blog post. You bang it out in twenty minutes, you’re so inspired. You post it to your blog and…
Nothing. No comments. Subscriptions stay the same (or drop).
Welcome, New Coke.
So, you’ve got a couple of choices. You can keep writing along that same line of thought, keep talking about that same topic, hoping your readers will eventually catch up with your brilliance. Maybe throw ‘em a post or two of your old style, but keep pushing that new idea.
Alternatively, you can ditch it. You can go back through your blog, look at what worked. What posts generated the most comments, or the most conversion? Study those posts. Think about their style, their content, and even how you promoted them. Take those principles and apply them to your next blog post, and see what happens.
I’m not saying you should just rehash old posts; far from it. I’m just suggesting that, sometimes, your amazing ideas should be set aside in favor of using what works.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This enables websites to implement and offer many of the features of the Facebook Platform off of Facebook. Many are supposing that Facebook Connect will quickly relegate OpenID to the ranks ofNew Coke(or for those younger amongst you, DRM). Perhaps the more important question is how will Google’s less than stellar record of customer support hinder their success with rival platform Friend Connect
y no, con un clic ya esta abierto feedReader. Tengo demasiados artículos por revisar, considero que es el hábito, me falta mucho mas para tener todos los reflejos de un Profesional en Línea, por ahí va la cosa. Ahora encontré un articulo “The New Coke Blog Post” de John Cow, ya se bajaron el libro “Cómo Construir un negocio con sólo un blog”, esta en ingles, pero adelante, no sean tímidos, ustedes lo pueden leer de todas maneras con algún traductor. Estoy leyendo el
Hi John, absolutely spot on there mate. I have a billion ideas a day and 999,999,999 of them are a waste of time that people won’t appreciate or respond to…
Very interesting post.
I have never heard of New Coke though (that might be because I live in Norway), but I got your point.
I have a tendency to just write whatever is on my mind, and never think about the traffic, the comments or what the consequences might be from publishing the post.
From now on, I’ll try to think about New Coke whenever I write new posts.
It’s important to provide the readers with something that they wanna read
It seems people like you like different posts than your readers. So you should write for your readers.
Ouch… you did not like this post?
hi Mr Cow,
I wouldn’t give up right away if a new idea doesn’t work, but you definitely need to know when to cut your losses, and when to stick with a “classic” success formula. Good analogy for this post.
Regarding Coke Classic, I think when they “reintroduced” Coke Classic, it wasn’t actually the same old Coke, but they took the opportunity to switch to a cheaper form of sugar. That’s what I remember hearing, but I’d have to investigate…
~ Steve, aka the Coke-is-better-than-Pepsi-but-Dr-Pepper-is-the-best trade show display guru
Coke hasn’t been the same since they removed teh cocaine
Seriously though, it is important to be able to seperate our personal opinions of posts and focus on the reality of which posts appeal to the audience and provide more of the same in the future.
[...] Source:The New Coke Blog Post Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
I agree completely John Cow. Like you said… see what works then use it. See what blog posts draw the most interest, that is a great piece of advice. It shows again Content is King, but good content will keep you on the throne.
In India , they haven’t launched the new coke….
Does it really taste worse….if yes…we Indian thnks to coke….
Good soft drink here which i usually like to have it..Thanks for the drink..
You are right. I’ve seen that happen as well. It could be interesting to go through blogs and see which types of posts have been the most successful.
i heard that coke actually INTENTIONALLY created “new coke” in order to create a controversy and get attention, knowing that people would prefer the old one, and thus be able to strike a “the-people-have-spoken” pose at the end of it, which would automatically posit the idea in people’s mind that the “saving” of the “classic” taste of coke was something very important.
whether or not this is true, it seemed like it worked out well for them, for now ALL coke is “classic”.