Why you should kill more content

An avatar of the author

Doug Kessler

29. 06. 2021 | 2 min read

Why you should kill more content

2 mins left

Get the newsletter

Raw, unfiltered, too-hot-for-Wordpress B2B marketing insights, straight to your inbox, every month.

Back when people could be in the same room with other people, I took a one-day workshop on data journalism given by David McCandless of Information is Beautiful fame.

I got a hell of a lot out of the day, but the thing that stayed with me most was something David said, almost as an aside, in answer to a question.

The question was something like, “What about the data visualizations that just aren’t working?”. And his response was, “Oh, we kill them. We kill way more than we publish.”

The workshop proceeded—full of fascinating insights into how great information graphics get made. But that little side comment, “We kill way more than we publish,” stuck in my craw (the stickiest corner of my limbic system). I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Put this in your own craw and see if it sticks:

One of the best data journalists in the field… kills way more pieces than he publishes.

And, remember, he’s already got a data journalist’s eye. So most of the pieces he starts are already way better than most of the pieces you or I start. But he still kills more than he completes.

That made me think about our own ‘kill rate’ at Velocity. For our own B2B marketing content, we probably kill 2-3 out of every 5 pieces that get started (and the other 2-3 take ages because they get bumped by client work—mea in toto culpa).

But for our client work—the paid-for stuff—our kill rate is really low. I’d say it’s about one in 30 pieces or maybe even fewer. We pivot a fair amount but we rarely kill anything.

Maybe there’s something about the agency-client relationship that leads us to finish what we started—to deliver all of our ‘deliverables’—and to do it as closely as possible to the original scope, within the budget and on time.

That’s just being professional and service-oriented, right?

But as the McCandless workshop went on, we all saw David’s ruthless strategy in action and started to recognize the value of it. We could see just how many dead ends there were on the road to even his most successful data graphics.

He was routinely killing stuff we’d be proud to publish.

And it’s amazing how far he often goes before entirely abandoning an idea or an approach. Some of the pieces on the kill pile are way better than 90% of the editorial infographics published today (and 99.9% of the marketing ones).

That’s one high bar.

But maybe that’s exactly why David isn’t just good at data journalism and visual storytelling, it’s why he’s famous for it.

Thought experiment: what would your own content program look like if you killed, say, 30% of the pieces you started—and focused the energy saved on making the other 70% as great as they could be?

Published in:

  • content-strategy

  • data-visualization

  • visual-marketing

Enjoyed this article?
Take part in the discussion

Opt into our crap

We will send the latest stuff written just for B2B content marketers exactly like you. Sound good?

illustration of a an envolope

Related blog/content

How to break free from the benchmark trap

If you’re turning to industry benchmarks to set your performance goals – make sure you’re asking these two questions.

Agustin Rejon | 06. 09. 2023

Comments

  1. Pieter van Diggele

    aNewSpring

    June 29th, 2021

    Spot on Doug! Was chewing on our marketing vision last Friday and one of the pillars I wrote down was quality over quantity and that we should aim for marketing/content worth paying for! We should raise the bar so high, that even when we don’t meet it all the time, what we deliver is still worth every second of whoever spends time reading it.

    1. Doug Kessler

      June 29th, 2021

      Love that, Pieter. I always wonder what content would look like if companies collapsed the time, money and effort spent on any ten pieces and put it all into one, great piece.

  2. Maria Clara

    Intelipost

    July 13th, 2021

    Well, this was a slap in the face, Doug. A good one, very enriching. You won’t get me to admit that maybe I enjoyed it, though.

    (I enjoyed it).
    (Looking forward for more marketing BDSM, cheers!)

    1. Doug Kessler

      July 14th, 2021

      Hah! Love that: B2BDSM.

  3. TheResearchGuardian

    The Research Guardian

    August 6th, 2021

    The author should take some more time on a single room with other people, because research take much more time which is essential. I would like to tell that someone take action on it.

  4. Johnathan Weberg

    Weberg Enterprises, LLC

    August 31st, 2021

    I couldn’t agree more with this! Every piece of content produced should ONLY be of the best result producing standard. Otherwise your own content, or that for clients, will lack and in the long run become and be less effective. The best, thought out, and effective content take time and methodical strategy to create. Love this!

Leave a comment/reply

Hey look: a teeny-tiny cookie request. Would you mind? It’d help us out. Click here to read our privacy policy to see why. Or hit “customize” if you’re fancy like that.

Customise