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From Reads to Leads is a newsletter for B2B tech founders and marketing leaders whose marketing isn’t working. It’s about positioning, messaging, content strategy, operations, and results. If this was sent to you, subscribe here so you don't miss the next email.
In today's newsletter:
As a copywriter, I hate the word “quality.” Every time I see it, it lights up a nerve in my brain, responsible for separating bullshit from specificity.
As someone who works in the technology field, I often ask my clients: How do you ensure quality? I'm looking for something specific. The word “standards” nails it.
In every professional field, standards define how something should be done. We have standards for quality at Zmist & Copy too. Our editor scores each draft based on these ingredients:
These are our editorial standards – a shared definition of quality and a tool for identifying what our writers need to work on if the score is low.
But these standards don't guarantee results. A content piece can have a perfect structure, original thoughts, match the business goal, but still not work.
A better way to create quality content is to stop asking:
"Is this good content?"
and start asking:
"What would make someone choose this over everything else they could read right now?"
Think about it.
People are watching TikToks filmed on phones instead of Netflix series that cost millions to make. Substack newsletters are pulling readers away from The New York Times. Roblox games built by teenagers are more engaging than AAA studio releases. On LinkedIn, messy Google Docs get far more comments from people asking for access than polished PDFs ever do.
“Think of quality as the algorithm a consumer uses when choosing between similarly priced goods, in a similar context. Under this definition, quality is revealed preference.”
Doug Shapiro in Quality is a Serious Problem
Ask any content marketer to define "high quality content," and they'll all say: it's content that provides value. Has unique thoughts in it. Well designed. Thoroughly edited.
But if you look at what actually performs across different channels and formats, that's not always true.
This week I posted something on LinkedIn that proves the point:
It took me 5 minutes.
I read an article by Ryan Law on Ahrefs blog, grabbed a stat about the cost of content production pre- and post-AI, and copied and pasted a few other thoughts. I didn't add any original takes. I didn't even rewrite the ideas Ryan shared. This post required almost zero effort.
And yet, here are engagement numbers: 470+ likes, 90+ comments, 60+ reposts.
By the “traditional” definition, this is low quality content.
But for someone trying to grow a following on LinkedIn, it is high quality content.
Quality isn't universal.
While the industry keeps debating over long-form vs short-form copy; AI-generated vs human-written LinkedIn posts; SEO-optimized vs reader-first blogs, your content is sitting there doing absolutely nothing for your business.
The problem is we expect the same quality for anything we create, regardless of the context. Instead, just like tracking content results (what I talked about last week), you need to define quality per piece based on the purpose and channel (or context as Animalz says).
One of our Zmist & Copy's B2C SaaS clients grew from 91K monthly visitors to 192K (and counting), and 2X their sales from the website within a month.
How? By tweaking the strategy and scaling content production from 10 to 40 pieces a month.
The "quality" police would hate what we did:
For this client, “quality” content meant traffic that converts. High traffic → more sales.
But for B2B clients, it’s a different game. Quality there means attracting the right 1K visitors who are ready to spend $50K. High traffic numbers mean nothing.
Ask these questions for each piece:
What's the purpose?
What's the channel or context?
Then define context-specific quality markers:
Each content type serves a different job in your buyer's journey.
LinkedIn posts need to stop the scroll. SEO content needs to answer search queries. Case studies need to support internal business cases. Email nurtures need to move prospects to the next stage.
Quality isn't about meeting universal standards.
It's about serving the specific job your audience hired that content to do.
I'm curious - what "quality" metrics is your content team optimizing for?
Kateryna
P.S. If we aren't connected already, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. If you like this newsletter, please refer your friends.
P.P.S. Need help with quality content? Zmistify your content with Zmist & Copy
A lack of calls to action in blog posts is one of the reasons why readers don't continue their journey on your website and don't convert into leads. The good news is, it's easy to fix. Check out the best examples of calls to action to add to your blog.
Here is a question: Does your content help people do a job people are hiring it for? Right, people hire content as well as they hire doctors, plumbers, presidents, or software developers. Let's find out why they do it and how you can use it in content marketing.
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