Don’t Worry, Be Content: 10 Rules for Creating Quality Editorial

No rules, just write, right? Not so fast.

Though creating quality editorial is an art, there’s absolutely a science behind it, according to Kim Caviness, VP of content at TMG Custom Media (disclosure: the company behind this blog).

Here are her 10 rules for quality editorial:

1. How do you know great content when you read it?

There is an almost cinematic beauty to the way words and graphics are spliced together. Great content sneaks into your unconscious without your even realizing you’re making a decision to buy into it in the first place. The way that it’s broken up into content units is so intelligently put together that you don’t for one second stop, think, or decide: Yes, I’ll read this. You just succumb.

Take my guilty-pleasure read: US Weekly. Sure, the New Yorker and lots of great books are on my nightstand, but that’s what I reach for first when it arrives (yes, I subscribe. I know.). When I flip through US Weekly, time just stops. Its addictive mix of photos and words gives me what I want but didn’t know I wanted, in a perfectly orchestrated way. I don’t even realize I’m turning pages. How can we get our magazines to suck in people like that? That’s what keeps me up at night.

2. What role does design play in custom content?

I’m a word person, but design is almost more important in getting people to pay attention to your content. If the design is sharp enough, they cannot look away. These days, I find myself focusing more on fine-tuning the design of our editorial products, because, once we get it just right, then all we have to do is slip in our amazing content into it, and it all comes together.

Design is the magic—it’s the architecture around the incredible furniture in the house. If the house is beautiful, you can’t help it, you have to walk in. If it’s not, you won’t notice the chair in the corner, no matter how perfect it is. If you get the design wrong and the content right, you’ve probably still lost your reader.

3. How do you write great headlines?

The best ones are delivered by your unconscious. Sometimes, I’ll place an order for one. I’ll think: need a headline, 3 to 5 words long, should include wordplay having to do with X. It would be nice if it had a secondary meaning having to do with Y. Luckily, it usually just pops in. Sometimes it comes later. If it doesn’t come to you at first, put in a placeholder there, and it will pretty much always come to you the next morning, in the shower.

4. How do you go about organizing the content in a magazine?

My favorite part of making a magazine is the minute before it exists. When it’s all possibility, and nothing is set in stone. Again, it all begins with audience. Who exactly will read your magazine? Where will they read it? What does your audience secretly wish was in your magazine or website? Once you know, you can build it. Department by department, feature by feature, big ideas always welcome.

It’s like building a house, you go room by room, thinking of what readers will do in each area, no matter their mood or time of day. How do you fill the back of the book and make it so that people actually want to hang out back there? Every part of the reader experience can have a place in the home. All you have to do is figure out how to get them to come into each room.

5. Then what are your rules for the front of the book?

There are so many distractions in life, the front of the book has to be zero work. You have to fall into it, almost despite yourself.

Historically, magazines do short, grabby stuff up-front. That continues to be true. But we have to make these FOB sections even shorter and 10 times more visual. If readers have to do even one lick of work to understand how to use your content, they’re going to go somewhere else. It needs to delight and surprise them into committing to you. Almost trap them.

6. How do you read your magazines?

First, I look at the cover. Then I open to a random page inside and look at one page of the design, the writing, and see if it succeeds on its own. Then I turn to the table of contents. The TOC reveals the way the magazine presents itself. It’s announcing to you who it thinks it is. It’s where the personality is. I look to see if it’s being honest with itself. If it is, then you know it’s going to be a good content experience. If the design of the inside page doesn’t synch up with the voice and feel of the TOC, then you know its going to be hard going and a reader disconnect. As far as reading order, I’ll go first to the one thing that grabs me in the TOC, and then I go in page order. I try to respect a magazine’s narrative arc.

7. What’s a magazine you admire?

New York magazine is a favorite. But when I read it, I force myself to NOT go to the back page first, to save the “Approval Matrix” for the end. It’s such a pleasure to work my way through the whole book and finish there, scrutinizing the quadrants of despicability and brilliance.

8. What’s the first step to creating new content?

Don’t even move a muscle until you absolutely understand who it is for. Come at it inside out. Ask: Who is it for and what do they want to have experienced when they finish each article? And then you give it to them.

9. What makes for good branded content?

Tone is everything. It’s the difference between a lightweight advertorial and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. They can both be about the exact same topic and quote the exact same sources, and one can utterly fail. Why? Tone. It’s the reason a reader will believe you or not. If the tone is right, readers trust you. If the tone is off, if it’s inauthentic, then you’ve lost everything because you’ve insulted the reader.

Design also comes into play. It amplifies tone, or diminishes or even buries tone, if you don’t get it right.

10. OK, OK. One more question. What’s your last piece of advice?

Never use “Food for Thought” as a headline.

For this post, I cornered Kim Caviness, VP of content at TMG Custom Media. Her first job out of college was answering the phones and serving as assistant editor here. After two years, she moved to Boston and later NYC and LA, where she worked in newspapers, film, magazines—including at major publishing houses like Condé Nast—and digital. Now back for her second round at TMG, she manages the editorial staff and oversees content creation, making sure it’s smart and innovative.

[image: etharooni]