Content That Annoys Readers
Posted on Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 3:03 PM
Is your content aversive to your readers? If you don’t know, perhaps
the time has come to ask.
By William Dunkerley
Beware,
your content has two sides to it -- one intended, the other unintended.
Creating
interesting and engaging content is a pretty universal objective of
editors. Providing articles that will attract new readers is important
too. Copy that pleases is an easy goal to understand and focus on.
The
other side of the coin is copy that annoys readers. We don't set out to
do that. But sometimes it happens. What's the result? Some annoyed
readers will write to complain. Others just silently don't renew if they
get really annoyed or are continually disappointed. Neither is a desired
outcome.
Survey Says
Typically when we conduct
surveys we test for content that readers value most. Rarely do we ask
what annoys them. Therefore, our sense of what readers want is more
acute than that of what rubs them the wrong way.
Last month in
our sister publication STRAT (a newsletter of print and online
publishing strategy), we asked the question "Do
Readers Hate Your Ads?" The article addressed the topic of ads
that cause an aversive reaction. There are a number of in-vogue
advertising practices that elicit negative reactions. The term we coined
for this is Aversive Advertising Syndrome (AAS).
In response we
heard from noted editorial expert Howard Rauch, president of Editorial
Solutions. He commented:
"To a certain extent, this interesting
discussion could apply to what we might identify as Aversive Editorial
Syndrome (AES). This exists in those cases where advertising hooks
dictate editorial content coverage -- often to the degree where topics
with clearly high reader takeaway value get lost in the shuffle. I often
find AES examples in print and online news sections due to an emphasis
on vendor-first news priority."
That provided the stimulus
for this article.
Balancing Reader and Advertiser Needs
Rauch’s
comment relates to content selection. Many editors experience pressure
from their ad departments to carry content that will help them sell ads.
Take
for instance a magazine intended for plumbers. There might be a lot of
ad money out there from companies that sell new or replacement faucets.
Naturally your ad sales team will be interested in capturing a good
share of that money. Being able to show a prospective advertiser that
your coverage includes lots of articles about faucets might help
interest the advertisers in your magazine. It might clinch a sale in the
view of the ad guys.
Editors certainly recognize their vested
interested in having their publications succeed financially and that ad
sales are fundamentally a good thing. But there is a real conflict here.
What if faucets are not a high-interest topic for readers? Too much
coverage will appear to them as editorial clutter. It is content not in
sync with their important interests. Even worse, the undesired content
may be edging out what they're really looking for in your publication.
All this can be potentially very disappointing and even annoying. Hence
AES appears.
Identifying Annoying Content
So what
content might be annoying your readers? In the absence of specific
research data, we can only speculate. Where to start? Perhaps it can be
informative to consider the kinds of things that annoy consumers in
general. Best Life magazine did an article on that titled "50
Things You Do Every Day That Annoy Other People." Here are a few of the
examples given:
--Looking at your phone when you're talking to
someone in person
--Tapping your feet
--Talking at the
movies
--Eating loudly
--Typing in all caps
We
asked around for some anecdotal evidence of publication content that
annoys. Here are the examples we were given:
--Content that is
off topic. If you subscribe to a magazine about electrical engineering,
too many articles about investment opportunities can be too much.
--Articles
that sound like they were written by a PR agency. You can spot them by
their overriding promotional tone.
--Product or entertainment
review articles that sound like a commercial. Too much hype.
--A
lack of clarity when describing a process.
--Explanations about
something new that mistakenly presume previous knowledge.
--Articles
that present nothing new -- just same old stuff.
--Recommendations
that don't pan out and instead turn out to be impractical or misleading.
--Consumer
product reviews that feature only high-end products with no budget
alternatives.
--Online comments from wackos.
--A pet
aversive reaction of my own arose with a local newspaper I used to read.
It was prone to running the same story twice in the same edition. It
didn't happen every day or even every week, but it was frequently enough
to notice that it was a common goof. Most readers probably weren't
bothered. But as an editor myself I recognized it as a symptom of sloppy
editorial control.
There's another point in that little vignette:
What is aversive for one person may not be a problem for others. In a
larger sense, what bothers readers in the content theme of one
publication may be okay in another.
The solution to Aversive
Editorial Syndrome is to find out what potentially irritates your
readers. We're always concerned about covering the hot-button issues
that concern our readers. Recognition of possible AES should lead us to
find out what the hot-button turn-offs are.
Perhaps your next
reader survey should include the question "Honestly, what is the top
thing about our content that annoys or disappoints you?" The answers may
be an eye-opener.
William Dunkerley is principal of William
Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.
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