Crowdsourced Copyediting: Never Sweat Pressing Publish Again
You know that moment of uncertainty when you click “send” on an important email that you haven’t proofread? Or worse, you publish a blog post without that “left it all on the field” level of confidence? Maybe it happens at the end of a long day. Or when you think you are multitasking, but you are really just doubled up on coffee and fumbling between distractions.
I know. I’ve been there—as has probably every one who regularly creates content. But guess what? There’s a method for overcoming that bout of doubt the second after you click publish—consider crowdsourced copyediting.
This practice furthers traditional peer edits by leveraging your networks of trusted peers, engaged readers and your broader audience. It has saved me time and helped me create better content through the years. I never publish anything without discussing it with several interested parties first. This process saves me decision time, and it helps me build on relationships of all types. Here’s how it works:
First publication: trusted peers
Your most trusted audience is most likely your colleagues, peers and mentors. Share your content with them first.
You can expect your most trusted copyeditor to read your content at a high level for form, tone and purpose. From experience, I’ve learned that those closest with you read your content with a wider lens, meaning they are more interested in how it fits into your story or your company’s story than how much sense it makes or how powerful it is.
I’m not condoning handing your trusted peers a sloppy first draft, but getting them involved in the earlier stages of writing is generally a good idea. There’s nothing worse than working hard on something only to trash it later because it didn’t serve the right purpose or uphold your brand’s image.
Second publication: interested clients
Leverage your closest clients/early adopters. They are already deeply engaged and will have conversations around the subject matter of your content. Why not crowdsource feedback further and push your next content to them before everyone else?
Content often comes from customer interactions. Wouldn’t that same customer be flattered that they inspired a blog post? I’m sure they would have something more to say on the topic, and you may have more to learn!
Read between the lines when receiving feedback about a publication. It’s not always what your audience says about your writing, it’s often what they don’t say.
Third publication: general public
Your general audience will be able to appreciate your content for what it’s worth. They will digest your brand, purpose, and subject matter. If you do it right, your audience will feel engaged in all of the conversations you had around your content.
Additionally, your widest audience will review your content for effective SEO (did they find it effectively), for strong call to actions (did they end up where you wanted) and help you write more effective copy next time.
There you have it—the three steps to crowdsouce you copyediting. I am sure that this art can become increasingly granular in its steps over time, so as we content markets engage this practice further, let’s share our findings for best practices.
KANYI MAQUBELA: Are Marketplaces Winner-take-all?
Kanyi lays out a nice synopsis of easiest to infiltrate businesses to hardest. In his linked blog post.
Easiest to infiltrate are content businesses/blogs, products become harder, network effected products are still harder, but marketplaces, marketplaces take the cake as the most powerful business today.
Part of a marketplace’s strength certainly comes from facilitating financial transactions, but further, it comes when a marketplace reaches liquidity.
Kanyi leaves us with the question of how to grow from there; vertically or horizontally?
I’d rather know how to get there first!
Haring in motion
After a thorough warm up with the Picassos at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, better known as the LACMA, a lot of the modern and contemporary art was really breathing with me. So, when I saw this Keith Haring painting for the first time in person, this I saw:
This Haring moved as first microbiology: chromosomes and blood cells were rotating about interacting in a sort of dance with another. Then it began to hit closer to home by revealing itself sociologically: grids and buildings of city streets from birds-eye view. Before the painting finally transitioned closest to home and into a dense and unbreaking crowd of people on city streets moving amongst one another.
The bright colors no doubt helped produce this vibrant energy.
I prefer seeing art in motion, so I often move around while I’m viewing a piece. I suppose it aids physical perspective and helps me empathize with the movement a painter makes while they create their piece.
Whatever it is, it helps me bring the artwork to life, and I think this is why it is so important to see artwork in person.
Fuchsia petal anchored and stretched strong.
Mower kicks leaves of grass and dust.
Water bead falls from fuchsia,
And in it refracts like windows to outside.
16 Twitter tips from the science of marketing
I recently read an except from The Science of Marketing by Dan Zarrella and courtesy of HubSpot. Dan extracted massive amounts of twitter data to determine optimal practices for retweets and links.
Here’s a quick summary of what I learned:
- @replies should compose less than 14% of your tweets.
- 22 tweets/day is the sweet spot (it’s hard to tweet too much)
- Avoid self-reference
- Avoid negativity
- Add terms such as “expert” to bio (when true)
- 60-80% of tweets should have links
- Call to action. “Please Retweet”
- 3-5pm is best time to tweet sharable content (high RTs)
- Friday si best time to tweet sharable content (high RTs), then Thursday, Wednesday, and Monday respectively
- Use rarer words
- Most successful words: you, twitter, social, please, retweet, 10, how to, toip, check out, free
- Tweet often matters more than link (ppl RT w/out reading first)
- Mix up link positioning. Try and put it 1/4 or 2/3 of the way thru tweet
- Longer tweets are better - 130 characters is sweet spot
- More adverbs and verbs
- Hottest times for links: 8-10am, 2:30pm, 5:30pm, 8-9:30pm
Advertisers are poseurs
Advertisers are always going to be wannabes. As they increasingly populate our social media feeds it becomes clear; they have paid their way into the party and are trying too hard to fit in.
Ads too are too often behind the curves and trends and thought. And until they start actually creating culture, instead off mimicking it, I won’t listen. Nor will I be impressed.
If I click on an ad, it’s usually a fuck you to the advertiser (they often pay) and a compliment to the website/platform in which I view the media.
