The Regret Test

· 4 min read

Everything you create should serve the consumer. HOW it serves the consumer may vary – education, entertainment, inspiration, companionship, etc.

Each piece of content may have unique goals for creating transformation, deepening trust, building likeability, or even earning a sale...

But, beneath it all, each piece of content you publish has a shared goal:

Make the consumer more likely to engage with your NEXT piece of content.

People talk about an audience as if it's a singular thing. But an audience is a collection of individuals. Individuals who EACH decide whether to continue a relationship with you and your content.

That decision is made (and re-made) each time they engage with something you've created. Every touchpoint is an argument for or against their continued attention – a credit or debit on the ledger of your relationship.

Engaging with your content comes at a cost to the consumer: time and attention. That's what it means to PAY attention.

We won't pay for something we don't believe is a better value than its cost.

So engaging with your content comes down to this:

Was it worth our time and attention?

I call this the regret test.

If your content doesn't pass the regret test, the individual is less likely to engage with it in the future. How often do you buy something again if you regretted it last time?

Passing the regret test should be your work's minimum quality standard. And as more creators join the scene, that standard rises.

If you don't constantly improve, you're falling behind.

This sounds straightforward, but it isn't easy. Things get harder when you introduce deadlines, lack of inspiration, other life challenges, etc.

The reality is that no one raises the bar with every piece of content they create.

Think about everything you publish as a scatter plot of quality over time:

As long as you're trending in the right direction, you're on the right track.

But how do you know if you're passing the regret test?

Quantitative Feedback

At this point, every publishing platform offers analytics. Each piece will give you some measure of engagement, such as downloads, likes, opens, clicks, subscribers, etc.

You want to look at these measures through:

  1. Comparison to your baseline
  2. Overall trends

Your baseline is the typical measure for your content on a specific platform. If your LinkedIn posts typically get 5,000 impressions, that's your baseline. A post that receives fewer impressions is underperforming your baseline.

Some measurements, such as email open rate, are less indicative of the quality of THAT content and more indicative of how people feel about your recent content. Since we can't actually judge the quality of your email without first opening it, our decision to OPEN an email is actually a reflection of how we've felt about the most recent emails we've opened.

This is where trends come in handy. When you look at your recent content on any platform, are things trending higher or lower than your baseline? If they are trending below baseline, then you're failing the regret test.

You want to identify these trends as early as possible. Your relationship with your audience is like a battery. Your content will either charge or deplete your audience trust battery. Most of the time, if you identify a negative trend early, you can rectify it quickly.

Qualitative Feedback

Analytics don't tell the full story. To get a more complete picture of your performance, you need to listen to qualitative feedback, too.

Are people responding to your work?

How many?

What are they saying?

When you fail the regret test, it's usually not that you're creating a negative response in the consumer – it's that you're not creating a response at all.

Negative feedback isn't the enemy – indifference is the enemy.

If you aren't receiving many responses, you're probably not resonating with your audience. If your ideas aren't saying something new, presenting something old in a new way, or generally making the consumer think or feel they won't react.

If we don't think or feel something, we regret the attention we paid for the experience.

Wrapping it up

If this feels daunting, that's a good thing. You can't just mail it in at this point in the creator economy.

We've never had more mediocre content competing for our attention than we do right now. And with AI, there will be more and more regrettable content available every day.

At the same time, there are incredibly talented and dedicated creators. And more of them every day!

You can't afford to make content that causes people to be indifferent. To a new consumer, your content is an audition – and every piece of content that fails the regret test is a failed audition.

You will NOT get another shot with a new viewer.

Thankfully, each piece of content that passes the regret test buys you some forgiveness.

Remember that negative trends are an aggregation of individuals' experiences. You can't win an audience back without winning back many individuals – and each individual will be in a slightly different state of trust or distrust.

Since you aren't creating unique content for each individual, your best strategy is to set a high standard for everything you produce. Each piece of content should add to the relationship rathan than take away from it.

Aim for everything you publish to pass the regret test.

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