Jim Stynes OAM was an Irish footballer who converted to AFL, became one of the great players of his era and went on to be twice named Victorian of the year for his charity work.
He died tragically of cancer in March 2012, just 45 years old. On the day of his death, the online reporter at The Age posted a news story of Stynes’ death that attracted around 700,000 page impressions. It was close to the most read story The Age had ever run online.
The next day The Age newspaper produced a 16-page special to mark Stynes’ passing. All the major sports writers, and some of the non-sports writers, contributed and the team produced a beautiful print product that hit the newsstands 24 hours after his death. But there was almost no increase in sales.
On the day of his death, the audience couldn’t get enough of the Stynes story. Twenty-four hours later, it was still important but not as relevant because people already knew about it.
Timeliness is critical in content. It is one of three time-based success factors for corporate content – the other two being cadence and frequency.
It is different to cadence and frequency. The former is about having a regular beat to content. The latter is about producing content at similar intervals. Timeliness, however, is all about producing content that meets the audience needs when they want it.
Publishing content today (November 5, 2019) is probably not a great idea, unless it has a Melbourne Cup or interest rate angle. They are the two big news events of the day and it’s very difficult to get cut through with anything else.
Timeliness is, arguably, the easiest way to be relevant. Latch on to something that your audience is talking or thinking about and be part of the conversation. Suddenly you become relevant.
A lack of timeliness is a great way to become irrelevant.
When the Reserve Bank cut official interest rates last month by 25 basis points, and major lenders failed to follow to the full extent, there was very little on their websites to explain why. A customer looking for answers got them from angry politicians and commentators, not from the lender.
Banks were always going to get kicked, but had they produced content to explain their decisions right from the get-go, they were at least in the conversation.
Timeliness isn’t just about latching onto the news of the moment. It is also about understanding and meeting the expectations of the audience. Content can be planned and carefully crafted – and then published at a well-timed moment for an audience.
What is timely to one audience may be old news to another. Knowing your audience and their needs allows you to be relevant to them.
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About this newsletter
Aylmer Anderson has begun producing a fortnightly newsletter based on what we know about content. It’s short and hopefully useful.
Each fortnight we will also include a website we like, or a comment we enjoyed, or a bigger piece that’s worth thinking about.
We think content marketing has had its run, and straight PR is flailing, so organisations that set up newsroom disciplines and processes can distribute their own content to audiences effectively.
We believe corporations need to get good at producing good content, in a form their audiences want, at a regular cadence, based on relevant information.