The giant pendulum that hates the editors is swinging back. For years, the “smart people” around the world were discounted to nothing; after all, who were they to be telling us their opinions. The content and index sites of the world decided that trying to put all their wood behind the best and the brightest arrows was too much work, and a crap shoot at best. They decided that all that mattered were the numbers – how many people vote (with their mouths, blog posts, inbound links, etc) for the right stuff is how much it should be “worth” for the general populous. However, without the human connection, the content is just dead, and users are completely uninterested. So, without automation to trust, how do you get your site to rise to the top?
The original solution was mining already existing user activity, to come up with a decent approximation. But, using pure user input is not the solution either – just looking at the top grossing/viewed lists for the year, you can get a whole bunch of highly viewed things that result in a whole bunch of totally uninteresting results. Of course, I would take the ability to sell a top ten TV show any day of the week, but the content is ultimately entirely bubble gum: watch, chew and discard. If you want reuse, and life long connection, your content must connect with your users.
How do you take advantage of the shift? The key is to let the human beings show through:
– You are the core of your site. Your passion must show through, especially to the effect that you can highlight all the places you are not just a machine. Blog posts, custom curated sections, even your about page must say something other than “we are a faceless organization.”
– Find the super users, and worship them. Talk about them in twitter, post about them on facebook, or have a trophy section on the site – anything you can do to make them the heart and soul of the site will let your users see that it is not just a super computer running this thing.
– Show the activity of your users. Sites that show off widgets where people are talking about your product gives your site a pulse. Use this in every way you possibly can.
At Entertonement, we have been a big beneficiary of users seeking high quality, editor created content. While there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of content that people listen to every day, the content that is the most viral and the most attractive is the stuff that real live humans have chosen. As part of the process of working with our professional content partners, we have highly trained (READ: people who spend far too much time watching TV and movies) choosing what to add. While they get lots of input to start from search terms and keyword research, ultimately they watch the movies, tv shows, video games and sports, and make the decision on their own. And, as a result, the clips they choose to highlight have that human element – the element that makes them inherently shareable.
The difference between pure data and true curation is hard to define but easy to know. The problem with the pure algorithm plus the crowd source solution is that it feels very much like a dictionary. The words are all in the right places, but it does not feel like there is an humanity there. To become a novel, the people who care need to let their personality show through. You will never product more content than the bulk solution, but the content you produce will be far more engaging. While the wisdom of the crowds and a million CPUs both have their places when it comes to building your company, but to get something great, you need to find just one person who will give your product a heart.
