How we kill 60% of our content briefs (and why it works)
The best content decision is usually no.
Sneha Kulkarni
Editorial Director
The filter
Every brief has to clear four questions before it gets a writer assigned. Is there real demand we can measure today. Do we have a credible angle that is not a rewrite of the top three results. Is there a clear next step on the page that ties to revenue. Will this still be true in eighteen months.
If a brief cannot answer all four, it goes back to the queue. That is where roughly six in ten end up.
What we publish instead
- Original research, even small samples. A hundred customer interviews beats another listicle.
- Internal teardowns of real campaigns, with numbers we are allowed to share.
- Deeply specific how to pieces aimed at someone who has already tried the obvious thing.
- Updates to existing pages that are already ranking but losing freshness.
Why this is not laziness
Killing briefs is not the same as publishing less. Our clients still ship two to four pieces a week. The volume is the same. The hit rate is not. When you stop publishing the things that were never going to work, the things that do work get more time, more research and more distribution.
Work with us
Want this kind of thinking on your next quarter?
We take on a small number of new engagements each quarter. If the brief is interesting, we will say so. If it is not, we will tell you that too.
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