At 's first All-Hands company meeting for 2020, introduced the team to the concept of a Since the term is pretty self-explanatory, I'll get straight to the story of how we're using this framework to prioritize activity. Hacker Noon CPO Dane Lyons North Star Metric. Hacker Noon's North Star Metric is Reading Time. What good is getting published on one of the world's biggest independent tech sites if nobody's taking the time to read your work? The inverse also holds true—how credible is the claim to being one of world's biggest tech sites if the majority of your audience isn't getting from the content you're publishing? real value There Are Multiple Categories Of Inputs With The Potential To Move The North Star Metric. If our critical number is , we know from experience that there are Total Reading Time on Hacker Noon X number of inputs (see WIP sketch above) likely move this metric, e.g.: [ input category: - controlled largely by our community of over 10k+ contributing writers ] Total Words Published Per Week New Content [ input category: - influenced by brand, partner, and editorial teams; ultimately the product team's jurisdiction ] Reader Actions Taken Per Session Reading Experience [ input category: - the Editorial Team's key area of influence ] Daily Shares on Twitter Distribution Improving Hacker Noon's reading experience is one of the ways our Product Team influences reading time. Everything from an early decision to exclude paywalls or pop-up ads to are great examples of bets taken by Product to move the North Star Metric. recent innovations like in-line annotations When it comes to influencing Hacker Noon's North Star Metric, The Editorial Team has the most manoeuvrability and influence within the input category of Distribution. Any Team Member Can 'Bet' On An Input Within Any Category, In The Hopes of Moving The North Star Metric So, for example: as managing editor, I make a daily bet that the more stories I review, copyedit, and , the more time people will spend reading stories on Hacker Noon. improve, optimize, distribute What's your team's North Star Metric? Which kinds of inputs and activities are known to move the needle on that metric? What are the bets you can take in your role today to have an impact on that metric tomorrow? Longer term, I'm currently betting on inputs like improving our user on-boarding experience with stellar app emails, and the growth of following as an input with the potential to become a key content distribution channel and traffic source for us. Hacker Noon's Instagram ( We're pretty late to the game , but bootstrapping, in a sense; trying to work smart and not hard to find out how many legitimate, engaged followers it's possible to gain with only intelligent content; so far, spending zero cash or ads or bots.) More On How Content Distribution Works At Hacker Noon When you publish a story on Hacker Noon, by someone who might actually GAF about your POV—as soon as robotically possible. a number of Content Distribution levers get pulled to make sure your story has the best chance of being seen . Your story gets published on at eight bonus hackernoon.com pages; one for each of the 8 SEO tags added to over 53k+ . Your story gets automatically tweeted Hacker Noon followers , for 200k+ daily visitors to enjoy. Your story has fair opportunity to get featured in a newsletter and/or on the homepage on hackernoon.com Our goal, as a team, is: Better Distribution for Every Story. Which is also why we've launched a new this year. In 2020, Hacker Noon we'll send three kinds of emails: email distribution strategy The Noon Notification Thematic Letters Product Updates App Emails Go here to subscribe ; click here to learn about how you can get your brand atop these emails in support of our mission to spread great tech stories all over the interwebs. On The 2020 Roadmap For Hacker Noon's Editorial Team Product ➕Editorial = 💚 , , , and are placing bets big and small to improve Hacker Noon's reading experience every day. Our #progress channel from the future of online publishing. Austin and I are looking forward to co-authoring regular product updates to tell the story of what we decided to work on and how it went for those two weeks (or whatever time range we decide on). Dane Austin Storm Mark reads like a PR party The Hacker Noon Contributor Development Program I̶n̶ ̶2̶0̶2̶0̶,̶ ̶ This week, we're being more proactive about reaching to our to top writers, to make sure they're aware of: Our standing offer of free and qualified editorial support from post conceptualization and copyediting, right through to publishing and distribution. The value of regularly publishing on Hacker Noon, not only for the potential readership from our monthly audience of 4M+ technologists, but also for the opportunity to contribute to an open, non-toxic community of ; ; and contribute to interesting and important conversations about the future. dev tutorials build your products in public The opportunity to opt-in for more formal, email-newsletter-based support coming soon—writing prompts, inspiration from writing around the web, that kinda thing. Better Brand Storytelling Working closely with our VP of Business Development, , Editorial will ramp up support for our to ensure only the best branded content gets published on Hacker Noon. Utsav Jaiswal Brand-As-Author program Our editorial support for Brands-As-Authors is one of a few ways Hacker Noon is proving that staying sustainable in publishing today need not necessitate making people pay to read content, or employing aggressively intrusive on-site advertising strategies. So, that covers strategy and vision. A few final housekeeping notes around the weekly/daily habits of an adequately effective editorial team: On Finding The Ideal Editorial Team Meeting Rhythm Why U No Meeting-Free-Monday? I loathe a Monday meeting. I mean, I loathe a meeting in general like any card-carrying millennial my age, but in particular, I find meetings on Mondays ( Fridays—unless of the fun / brainstormy / retrospective / beer-fuelled variety) counter-productive. or completely If "all happiness depended on a leisurely breakfast" in the century, all happiness today surely depends on a pro-choice attitude towards your (hopefully— —at least partially ' decisions to greet a new week on their own time, and acquaint themselves with its key priorities at their own pace. 20th by now free-range) employees We meet weekly on Tuesdays, now. It works. Across four timezones, somehow. We learned the thing about Mondays last year. What Mondays Are For, According to Hacker Noon Catching up on relevant words from around the interwebs Typically, publishing the highest number of fresh tech stories, and receiving the highest number of daily users for the week Engaging with those stories by leaving annotations (using Hacker Noon 2.0's ) blockchain-based in-line commenting feature Also: writing. On Learning To Talk About The Right Things In Editorial Meetings You might be surprised to learn that with the plethora of freemium tools available out there for managing collaboration, workflow, and project deadlines, we're currently getting the most value from this hacked-in-five-meetings Google Sheets template: It's insane to think that when myself and Utsav started at Hacker Noon in early 2019, it was and —and, on most days, David and Linh—managing the entire editorial process: engaging a community of writers in the thousands; publishing enough stories a day (and making them quality enough) to sustain a monthly audience of 4M+ and a top 3k Alexa ranking, sending newsletters... All while nailing CEO'ing and COO'ing and fundraising and parenting ( rn, fyi) on the side. David Linh only the most articulate and sunshiney smol human on this planet Today, Linh's got Ops on lockdown with , and David's so CEO —and yet both of them somehow still find the time to stay close enough to maintain highest editorial quality, , and an engaged and supportive community. support from The Office he now speaks in quarters happy sponsors We're all pretty excited to be alive and a part of this team in 2020, and we hope you are too. If reading this sparked any ideas on how we might make Hacker Noon better for you in 2020, please feel free to highlight some text and leave me an annotation or two 🤗

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