Coverage feels like the valuable thing. It arrives, people send it to each other, and for about seventy-two hours it is the most visible thing your organization has ever had. Then it stops. The link still works and nobody opens it.
A profile page behaves in the opposite way. It is quiet on the day it is created and it does not decay, because it answers a question people keep asking: who are these people and are they real?
The two questions people actually search
Almost every search about an organization is one of two kinds, and they want different pages.
- “What happened?” — an event search. Asked for a few days, by people who already know the event occurred. A story answers this.
- “Who are they?” — an existence search. Asked forever, by somebody deciding whether to buy from you, apply to you, supply you, fund you or send their child to you. A profile answers this.
The second group is smaller on any given day and far larger over a year. It is also the group that is about to make a decision, which is why a thin or missing profile costs more than a missed story.
What a profile carries that a story cannot
A story is a moment: one headline, one summary, one city, one date. A profile is the standing record — what you do, where you operate, which industries you sit in, who the people are, and every story ever published about you, gathered in one place.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Eight stories over two years read as eight unrelated events in a feed. On a profile they read as a track record, in order. The same facts become evidence of continuity, which is the thing a stranger is actually trying to establish.
Profiles also carry a verification state. A reader can see whether an organization is simply listed or whether we have checked that it is what it says it is — and that badge travels with every story you publish.
The asymmetry
Here is the practical version. Suppose you publish four stories a year.
| Four stories | One profile | |
|---|---|---|
| Effort | Four rounds of sources and evidence | Written once, revised occasionally |
| Peak attention | Four short spikes | None |
| Attention after a year | Close to zero | Higher than at the start |
| Answers “are they real?” | Only if the reader finds the right one | Always |
| Reached by someone about to decide | Occasionally | Routinely |
Stories are what bring a reader in. The profile is what they are looking for once they are curious. You want both, but if you are going to neglect one of them, neglect the stories — they are the half that was always going to fade.
What makes a profile worth landing on
Most profiles fail the same way: they describe the organization in the language of a brochure and forget that the reader is a stranger.
- Say plainly what you do, in the words a customer would use, not the sector’s.
- Say where, down to the locality. Local intent is most of the traffic.
- Name the people. A profile with a person on it is read as real; one without is read as a shell.
- Pick your industries honestly. Two accurate ones beat six aspirational ones.
- Get verified, so the badge is doing work for you on every story.
The uncomfortable part
A profile only accrues if it is true a year from now. An address you left, a person who has moved on, a capacity you no longer have — each one turns the page from an asset into a liability, because the reader who notices assumes the rest is stale too.
Maintaining it is ten minutes, twice a year. That is genuinely the whole commitment, and it is the highest-return ten minutes available to a local organization.
Next step
Register your organization, then keep the profile current from the workspace. Stories can come later.
Create your profile