r/K theory for media

In biology there is a theory known as the r/K selection theory which relates to two different general methods that species appear to use to ensure their offspring mature to adulthood.

In simplified terms, high r animals prioritize quantity, i.e. have a lot of babies and send them out on their own and a few of them will probably figure it out and survive to adulthood.

For example, think of fish or rodents.

While high K animals focus on quality, i.e. have a small number of babies but invest a lot of time into making sure that most, if not all, of them survive to adulthood.

Think of humans or bears or elephants.

This is pretty easy to see translated to different strategies for content creators as well.

A high r content creator might produce a ton of content that is mostly off-the-cuff in hopes that something resonates with someone.

Meanwhile a high K content creator would spend a lot of time making sure that each piece of content was as impactful as it could be, therefore the total amount of content would be less due to longer planning and production times.

So, based on the quantity of your outputs and your time investment in each one, where do you fall on the spectrum from high r to high K content creator?

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P.S. Apparently biologists refer to these two reproductive strategies as “cheap” and “expensive” respectively, which also seems relevant to the corresponding content creation strategy.

P.P.S. I think this concept would make an interesting pairing with last week’s linear vs circular media idea in your next content strategy conversation.

more considerations for quantity vs quality

Yesterday we looked at the difference between two different content development strategies:

high r: create a lot of content with minimal planning and production time

high K: spend lots of time developing each piece of content, but produce fewer overall

You know what? For our purposes and future reference I’m going to rebrand these as the “little q” (quantity) and “big Q” (quality) content strategies.

Anyway, here are a few more considerations you can think about related to this topic:

• Quality is not necessarily associated with length. It’s associated with invested time to nurture and develop. You can take the time to make it shorter.
• You can think of the content “offspring” as either individual content items, like a single blog post or a video, or you could think of it as a whole stream of content, e.g. you could see the whole channel of a weekly podcast as one item.
• These strategies are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You could have a little q content stream which is used to gauge what resonates and then choose which items you want to spend the time nurturing and maturing into a more focused form. Get creative!

But no matter how you go about it, remember:

1. Both strategies result in species that survive

and

2. The ultimate goal of your content should be to provide something of value to the customer while reducing the amount of excess time they have to spend on it