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3min chapter
"A.I. is going to radically change content marketing." Ryan Law of Animalz
The Cutting Room
How to Edit an Article to Be Useful
context acquisition is probably the most important thing to do. I'm always trying to read it through end to end as well because I find it very hard to do. And then probably lastly like be a bit pragmatic and work out. Do we have time for developmental editing? Is this something that we can take our time over and test the fundamental thesis or is thissomething that we just have to get live?" That's it for the podcast edition of the cutting room if you'd like to watch while Ryan edits live click on the link in the show notes and you'll be brought directly to the edit on our YouTube channel. We'll see you in the next one.
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Episode notes
Speaker 2
All right, let's move on to the next section you validated the idea you've come up with all of this, the pieces written. Tell me about your pregame before you
Speaker 1
edit. Yeah, so like context acquisition is probably like the most important thing to do. There is so much more to the performance of an article than just the words on the page that is part of it but that is not all of it. And to have any idea of whether this is going to be good and useful to you you have to understand the broader context exists and so why is this article created. What is the intended distribution method. What is the biggest strategy it fits into what are the desirable outcomes you want to this and who is the reader. All of those there are necessary bits of information to work out whether this thing is going to be good and do the thing you hope it will. Because a lot of times you know line edits, they won't materially impact lots of those really important criteria. I almost think about this kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of editing. There's no point doing line edits if you are running an SEO article and you've completely botched the search intent and like it's never going to match that in a million years. You have to understand that stuff before you move on to the more detailed granular edits. I'm always trying to read it through end to end as well because I find it very hard to do but I know it's really like unfair to the reader to jump in and immediately leave edits when you've not taken the time to read the whole thing and digested it as a whole. So I always try and do that. And then probably lastly like be a bit pragmatic and work out. Do we have time for developmental editing is this something that we can take our time over and test the fundamental thesis or is this something that we just have to get live and our job is to make it the best possible version of what whatever it is now. Because there's so many ways you can edit so many ways to be useful and to try and improve content you do have to ban the scope of how you're going to wade into the fray I think.
Speaker 2
I was talking with Emily triplet lens over a calendly to shows ago and one of the things she had said was exactly what you were talking about is it even doing what it is that we're trying to do and she says I won't even do any line edits if the idea itself isn't great so all the time if it clearly missed the mark so she'll get on a loom video to walk through it to do those developmental things because it's not even worth the time as an editor to like spend that much time in there if it just doesn't hit the mark right away. Well let's break into the second half let's jump into the live edit itself. Alright, first impression of the article. What did you think before you started jumping into it. And that's it for the podcast edition of the cutting room if you'd like to watch while Ryan edits live click on the link in the show notes and you'll be brought directly to the edit on our YouTube channel. And if you'd like to attend the next live session sign up for our email list at the content studio.com or slash the cutting room or by following the link in the show notes. And we'll see you in the next one.
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