When judging your content, ban the word “like”. You can like coffee or tea, but when it comes to content, take a professional judgement.
Make sure that you use the term “works” instead.
Does this content, for whatever media, work or not? In too many cases we look at content – a front page, a facebook entry, whatever it is – and ask: “do I like that?”
Producer not consumer
That’s not the point. We are not the consumer of the content: we are the producer. Unless it is only aimed at us, we should try to see how it works.
A student of mine audited Yours magazine this week. He’s male, in his 20s. It’s not aimed at him. So how could he say he liked it?
Focus group of grannies
He used a focus group of 8 of his grandmother’s golf club friends and found out how and whether they liked it or not.
And they did. No wonder. Valery MCConnell and her team do a wonderful job of putting together a magazine for grannies. They are not grannies: but they must be asking themselves every two weeks: what works?
That’s what gets them a circulation of 280,804 per issue, according to the latest Brad figures.
Ban “like” and improve your content.