Happy Sunday, Pixie-led one!
There’s a whole lot of interesting stuff in the Sunday Five this week. You’ll see my thoughts, below. Many of them are very direct. Ha!
One of the things that strikes me about the industry in which we work is that it’s very prone to in-fighting. Nobody knows what anybody actually does. Nobody knows how to describe it. And instead of talking to their customers, they’d rather spend all their time in definitions.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people just grew some balls and decided to be a thing, and told the right story around it to contextualise it?
I certainly think so. :) Nevertheless, as a reader who is not in our industry, know that the titles don’t matter. All you need to know is the problem you want solved, and then how to ask the right questions of other people before you decide to pay them.
Enjoy your (short) week this week!
cheers
Leticia
Queen Pixie at Brutal Pixie
Tip of the Week
Content Strategy became Content Operations, and people still don’t know what it is. Look up and see the big picture: It’s publishing.
The Sunday Five
As usual, if you spot something in the wild that ought to be included, shoot it through to us at hello@brutalpixie.com
[FEEDBACK] Josh Breinlinger reckons the 5-star rating system is BS
After reading this, you might, like me, agree with him. There is way too much variability, and way too many unknowns, for a 5-star rating system to work, much less to be reliable. He suggests that marketplaces are broken. It gives you insanely good insight into whether or not your method of getting customer feedback is also broken. Read it at http://acrowdedspace.com/post/182096883992/the-wheat-from-the-chaff
[CUSTOMERS] This US-based business shows you how to scale intimacy
The principles of scaling intimacy in your business are similar to many others, but it gives everything a different spin. They include Moving Slowly (by being focused), Saying No (it makes you stronger), Study Your Community (so you understand them), Be Modular (so you stay flexible), Collaborate (meaning partner). Great reading, get it at https://firstround.com/review/what-sweetgreen-can-teach-startups-about-scaling-intimacy/
[PODCAST] Hidden brain shows us science as misinformation
Even though we all like to believe that science is objective, the truth is that it is often far from it. As these guys unpack, it’s because we don’t want to not conform with the views of people we know and love. In fact, even if there’s evidence in front of us, we’ll reject it if it contradicts our beliefs. Even in science. Imagine what this does inside your business, in the data you collect, and how you make decisions, hm? Listen in at https://n.pr/2S3onzK
[MEDIA] Thousands of journalists have been laid off this week
Media layoffs are continuing around the world. Buzzfeed this week announced it’s getting rid of 15% of its staff. Then Verizon, which owns HuffPost, AOL, Yahoo + more, said it was getting rid of 7% of its staff. More followed from websites and newspapers worldwide. It’s ostensibly because of funding and people not paying, but I suggest they’ve got the model wrong. As one of our lovely subscribers suggested to me the other week, if he could just pay $0.20 for access to a single article, he’d end up paying more in a month than most subscriptions require. The difference is that it puts choice in his hands. I reckon he’s right. And if you’re looking to make subscriber money from your publications, I’m going to tell you to really really interrogate your assumptions about revenue models. Anyway! Read this at https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2019/layoffs-sweep-journalism-today-shows-controversial-guest-sanders-says-wh-is-responsive/
[CONTENT] Your 2019 buzzword in content is Content Operations, and people are still arguing about what it is
I’ve seen arguments about who does what and why in publishing ever since I was an editor. I’ve seen editors, copywriters, professional writers, commercial writers, online writers, digital writers, content strategists, marketing strategists, digital marketers, blah blah blah. Now, it’s Content Operations. The trouble is, the same people that argued that content strategy isn’t marketing are still having this argument about content operations versus marketing. Like seriously. It’s publishing - and I feel like the only one who can see it. Nevertheless! Kapost wrote this little piece about what Content Ops actually is, and shows us how it’s just small specialisation in a bigger, already-known process. Read it at https://marketeer.kapost.com/content-marketing-platform-vs-project-management/