The 7 rules of making your content stand out in today’s media ecosystem

Wading through today’s media universe, you may think there’s no way for your content to stand out. I mean, look at this:

How can you possibly compete with this absurd cat that is all of us? Not to mention Snapchat stars, well-funded professional journalists at places like The New York Times, 35,000 hours of movies at Netflix, 18.7 billion text messages, the media manipulator in chief, Facebook outrage streams, and Instagram insanity.

Easy. Just use the 7R strategy, a collection of seven principles that make a media project succeed. I learned them over two decades of swimming in the news and working for Stanford SPARQ (where my consulting agreement is approaching its end), The New York Times, SupChina, Spectrum, The Albuquerque Tribune, and others (and pulling together a few movies and books along the way).

You can explore 7R below. If you’d like to talk about how we can use these concepts to solve your content problems, please contact me. Enjoy:

1. Repetition: The content needs to be released regularly and often. Curation can address some of this.

2. Reputation: The content needs to be accurate, well-sourced, and reliable.

3. Recreation: The content needs to be entertaining, informative, appropriately short (or long), and helpful. Serve the reader’s needs, not the author’s ego.

4. Right: The content needs to avoid the trap of repeating misinformation in an effort to correct it. Just say what’s right. And present conclusive expertise, not arguments. People need less conflict in the media space, not more.

5. Realm: The content needs to go where people are online. Find them on Facebook and Twitter. Give them apps on their phones. Provide browser extensions. Make software that gives them the ability to layer the lens of your expertise over whatever they’re doing when they’re doing it.

6. Route: Choose the right medium for the message, audience, and resources. GIFs may be popular, but they may not fit every communication scenario. Video can be great, but do you have a budget to do it well? Animation can turn abstract ideas into concrete media experiences, but do you have information that needs its unique capabilities?

7. Reign: Content following these guidelines creates a media destination that lends power and credence to whatever appears within it. People begin seeking out such information providers. As an example, consider how an article’s presence in The New York Times elevates the status of the story. That frame provides power to shift public conversations about important topics.

There you go. An entire career distilled into seven bullet points of advice. And for free! It’s almost as amazing as a dog surfing:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.