One of the major content shifts I’ve witnessed in recent years as an editor is the move away from formulaic reviews and features towards experiential journalism that serves multiple platforms: Google, LinkedIn, Flipboard to name but a few.
(And yes, I know that many publishers are looking to move towards ‘Google Zero’ – i.e. not relying on the search giant for traffic – but given it’s still one of the most potent sources of clicks around, it should be a primary focus for any editor looking to boost traffic).
The shift towards experiential content is one I was, many years ago, initially sceptical of. Now, having led content teams through the transition – using deep-dives on the analytics and audience intent to guide us – I’ve witnessed surprising results.
That ranges from articles that garnered tens of thousands of views from a simple premise, to those that the writer was immensely passionate about, but failed to cut through.
On the surface, it sounds straightforward. Whether you’re visiting a place, testing a product, watching a movie, or whatever your audience is hungry for, experiential content must put the audience’s needs at the heart of its angle, giving them a clear reason to be inquisitive and want to learn more. And yet, it’s not as simple as it sounds.
But, hard is good, right? It means you can work hard and get results, so if you’re looking to enter new areas of content – or start writing articles at all – these are the things that I’ve learned over my decades of journalism.
AI content (or ‘slop’, depending on your stance) is coming, so here’s what to focus on to try and keep the attention of your audience.
Nice buns?
I’ve held the role of managing editor at a variety of outlets in my many years in editorial, with a huge variety in audience sizes. As such, I’ve seen some experiential angles work wonders, such as pitting products against each other in a specific, yet relatable scenario, and others fall flat. In the latter case, it can be incredibly frustrating to see nobody clicking on something you worked so hard on.
However, dig a little deeper in the analytics, trends, and SEO research and there’s usually a reason why an experiential piece you thought was a sure-fire winner failed to live up to expectations.
A supermarket hot cross bun taste-test might sound like a fun idea for a lifestyle publication, and it definitely is enjoyable when the office is full of the sweet treats . But just because you have the means to acquire a vast selection of buns, and you’ve identified the audience could well be interested in the results, doesn’t mean you’ve got a guaranteed hit on your hands.
At one of my previous roles, we did this exact test. We had scoring criteria, all major brands represented, and a willing team of experienced product testers.
However, the publication we were working on was still fairly nascent, and as such the domain was so fresh it hadn’t had time to build authority.
The team produced a piece which was fun, entertaining and delivered practical buying advice off the back of real-world experience. However, without many articles proving our authority and expertise on this topic, or any legacy coverage on similar tests, it fell flat on search and Google Discover.
But that doesn’t mean it was a failure – far from it. The content was good quality, with a clear testing process, clear and well-written prose, and a defined outcome. That’s the foundation of building a content strategy, where good work eventually leads to better results.
Our hot cross buns test also performed very well in the newsletter – which already had a big, highly-engaged audience – thanks to having personal insights, a conversational tone and something different that readers were interested in finding out about.
I’ve implemented multiple content plans where we publish lots of great content that doesn’t get read by many, but then after a month (or three) the traffic will start to head upwards as readers, Google and other platforms see that we’re serious about helping our readers in this area, and we’ve got something to add to the conversation.
Spicy temperature check
I’ve witnessed countless junior writers – myself included, many moons ago – get excited about a potential angle but then lose their original focus because they’ve not planned the structure of the article fully and made every paragraph relevant to the exciting title they’ve come up with.
A spicy headline, more often than not is all heat, no substance if the writer just starts free-flowing on the article.
That’s not to say these writers are having bad ideas – far from it in fact. The passion they have for their subject matter is infectious, and it’s that desire that drives the best content out there. It’s one of the most important qualities I look for when hiring new staff.
In some teams, there were times where excitement during a product launch or news event led to ideas that weren’t fully-formed, and the point of the piece becomes unclear after a few paragraphs.
I’ve seen this lead to numerous hot take headlines posted on Slack and other team members jump in with a thumbs up or ‘fire emoji’ on the angle (our shorthand way of saying ‘heck, I would read that!’).
If unchecked, a junior writer could then dash off a hurried piece that doesn’t deliver a strong, important point that will impress the reader – either entertain them or give them important information. Without that key nugget, it just comes across a ‘filler’ content, and doesn’t encourage return visits.
So it’s critical that, as an editor, you always press the writer to structure the piece (even briefly) and ensure that all the points within it support the overall ‘thrust’ of the piece, and it’s not just being written for the sake of having something up.
Get them (or yourself, if you’re planning your own content) to craft coverage which shines a light on their expertise and experience in a way which delivers on the headline for the intended audience, and repetitively illustrates that trustworthiness in a variety of ways.
When it’s gone right, I’ve seen brilliant, insightful hot takes garner hundreds of thousands of views – but when left without a strong brief, great (but half-formed) ideas have only been read by a handful of people.
Listen to the people
Don’t assume that ‘if you write it, they will come’. There needs to be a deep understanding of your audience; what they want to know, what they like to engage with, and what triggers their curiosity.
As well as encouraging content teams to explore their passion, there have been multiple times when I’ve had to explain to writers why it’s time to pull the plug.
Sadly, no matter how much your writer might know and love a subject, some experiential content just won’t work for your brand.
It doesn’t mean it won’t work for anyone, but playing to your brand’s strengths is the best (and often, only) recipe for success.
This came to the fore when I started at one publication, and it was clear the audience wasn’t engaging with coverage on tangentially-related topic. The content itself was solid, but it’s not what the brand was known for, and the domain hadn’t built up a cohesive and interlinked web of coverage on related core topics.
This means when Google crawled it, there was a confusing web of links it couldn’t map out easily. It needed a central hub that collated all the content, but ‘internet culture’ is too broad a term for that.
To make this succeed, we would have needed a long-term strategy that covered multiple different areas and that just wasn’t feasible with the amount of writers available.
In these situations, I’d want to see editors make those tough decisions. Your resource is finite, and it has to be channelled into areas your audience wants and your team has the experience to deliver. For us, that was reallocating writers to focus on other areas of expertise, on topics that had already shown promise but needed more depth.
Being able to see when things aren’t working and redeploying your resource into another area is tough when you’ve got engaged writers, but they will quickly come around when they see the response their more relevant area of coverage is getting.
Image credit: photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash