Everyone wants high-quality content but no one can agree on what “high-quality” means.
Quality is a contentious topic among content marketers but the question gets even hairier when you get into technical marketing and developer marketing.
First, the general problem: Quality is entirely subjective.
Let’s say you’ve written a good blog post. By what measure is it good?
Hard to say. And if you back up, the answer remains hard: I bet most CMOs and writers couldn’t name, much less agree on, a perfect blog post. (Whereas most novelists, as a counterexample, could at least agree The Great Gatsby is, well, great).
Instead, we tend to rely on vague heuristics: Does it feel “in-depth”? Does it feel “well-written”? Is the voice “conversational”? Who can say?
The worst thing you can do after realizing how subjective this all can be is to ditch the idea of quality and try to merely meet your reader’s (or Google’s or social media’s) minimum expectations.
No. Quality is important but we won’t be able to identify what quality means if we think in linear terms. Which is why I want to propose a concept: The content quality thermocline.
A thermocline — a concept I’m borrowing from oceanography — is a distinct layer within a large body of water where the temperature suddenly and dramatically shifts. If you were to sink into the ocean, you’d feel the water gradually get colder until, at a certain point, the water would suddenly get much much colder all at once.
The thermocline points out how related qualities can have a nonlinear relationship. As writers, we tend to think in linear terms: More input (effort) = greater output (quality + results). But this isn’t true.
Developer marketing is a perfect example.
I’ve read — and written! — great content that didn’t resonate with developers at all. That’s not a contradiction. Sometimes great content targeted at one audience doesn’t succeed as well as “worse” content targeted at another.
The thermocline explains it. Content can be decent, good, or great but until it reaches a certain threshold — the thermocline — it won’t resonate.
Maybe your post is well-researched but the research is from the past couple of years. Would your argument suddenly become convincing if you connected a trend prediction to a long-term technology cycle?
Maybe the voice in your post is conversational but it lacks the details that make it feel personable. Would your post suddenly feel relatable if you added anecdotes that made the voice feel grounded?
Maybe the explanations in your post are clear and accurate but your readers, themselves technical, already understand. Would your post suddenly have a better bounce rate if you cut out most of the explanation and focused on the new-to-your-audience information?
The content quality thermocline is a heuristic. You can’t quantify it or define it. Instead, every time you write something good, ask yourself “Is it good enough?”
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