Part 2: 12 things I’ve learned about content (in 12 years of running a content agency)

During 12 years of running content agency Crocstar, I’ve learned a few important lessons about considering who we write for. I’d like to share those thoughts with you, as well as my take on that old argument about standards.

This is the second post in a series of four and you can read part one of the 12 things I’ve learned about content here.

4. User behaviour is baffling.

You learn about users. Who they are, why they’re here, what they’re trying to do. What’s getting in their way. You make a plan to solve those problems and make life (or at least this content) easier to use. You write the content. You’re ready to have all your hunches proved right and for this content to be a SUCCESS. ✅ Yes mate. 

But then. 

Hardly anyone clicks on the link. They don’t see the bit of information about how to do something. They rush ahead and hang back at all the wrong places. They’re confused – and so are you. 

Producing content for users is a responsibility. You can’t just do what you think is right and then leave. Especially for content that needs to be used by everyone (such as government information) but also for brands with a commercial need for the content to work. 

Testing, measuring and refining content is so important. It needs to work. It’s not advertising where there’s a line of clever copy and people talk about how ‘good it is’. It’s much more important than that. It’s the difference between people buying from you or not. People being able to complete a task or not. 

User behaviour can be baffling to you when you’ve designed the content. Suddenly you realise how different people’s experience, mental models and digital literacy is. That’s why content isn’t finished once it’s been published, it’s only halfway there.  

In 2004 I worked as a homepage editor at Yahoo (it was cool then and it’s still cool now) and my job was to decide what went on the homepage. It was a mix of news and content we had from around the site – such as music videos and tech reviews. We had a pretty good idea who our audience was (at the time it was 30-something broadband early adopters – they loved stories about tech, space and Britney Spears). We looked at the stats every day (they weren’t in real-time back then, we could only get them the next day). Doing this helped us make decisions on what to publish, what to promote, how to phrase things, what images worked well and more.

It was drilled into me that we measured our success by what the users did – not by what we did. What a brilliant lesson to learn at the start of a career. 

5. People always moan about ‘standards’.

People have been banging on about standards slipping since forever. Honestly. Moaning about the golden era of good and proper English is a complete fallacy so let’s all just relax, shall we, and accept that language use changes over time. Different doesn’t equal worse.

George Orwell wrote in his essay Politics and the English Language in 1946: 

“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.”

6. Technology changes but humans don’t (much).

Changes in technology mean we might need to adapt our writing (for example structuring content differently for voice) but humans don’t change as much or as quickly as tech. 

That’s not to say humans aren’t changing at all, but the way we understand information isn’t much different from one year (or generation) to the next. 

Get the basics right in terms of information and structure first, then adapt to where the content is seen or heard. Think – what is the story? What do people need to know and do right now? What is the purpose of the content? 

I’d love to know what you’ve learned about content over the years… and if you’ve enjoyed reading this post, number three in the series can be found here.