Ben Stroup

It happened so fast and with so little fanfare that you might not have noticed.

Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer be available in print.

For decades, parents felt good about the sizable investment and made room on their bookshelves so their children would have access to the information they needed for school projects and elementary research. Today, the print edition is now a collectable.

Maybe we can learn a thing or two from this decision.

When was the last time you evaluated your content delivery methods? Are they in sync with the native consumption habits of your target market?

Just because something works today (or worked yesterday) doesn’t mean it will work forever. Everything is always on the table.

What delivery methods do you need to stop using because they just aren’t as effective as they used to be? What new delivery methods do you need to consider?

Change is hard, especially for organizations with deeply entrenched processes and procedures. You may have made a sizable investment in your content delivery methods. So what? If the goal is impact and engagement, then change become a natural part of your process. In fact, if you’re not changing, you’re probably dying.

The hardest part of change is letting go of what’s comfortable for us.

Are you emotionally committed to perpetuating an existing platform, or are you unwavering in your conviction that engagement is the primary goal? One is focused on us. One is focused on others.

Ben Stroup is a content activist in a post-paragraph world. He is chief broker of opportunity at Ben Stroup Enterprises. Connect with Ben via email, Twitter, and Google+. Subscribe via email to learn how to use content to move people to action.