Following on last week’s post, today I make a contrarian argument for inconsistency in communications—particularly with respect to editorial schedules—based not only on Oscar Wilde’s pithy words,  but also on some basic cognitive processing principles.

There are some places where a little inconsistency can serve your communications purposes better than a rigorously followed pattern.

I have a slew of RSS feeds from blogs I like on my browser homepage.  I’ve noticed that not a single one of them publishes on a regular schedule.  Some publish several times a day; others every day; one a couple times a month at different times of the month.  Some publish a few days in a row, then don’t come back with anything for a week or two.

The ones I pay most attention to are those whose schedule does not seem to be consistent.  Why is this?  There are some pretty good reasons to do with human beings’ cognitive processing tendencies which, as a writer, you can (and should) use strategically:

We notice change more than stability

Our brains are built to pay attention to what’s novel, not what’s constant.  Once something is predictable, we start to ignore it.  You get the same email in your inbox at the same time every week?  After a while, you start to skip even opening it up.  But make even a minor change—to a subject line, ideally—and you’ll grab people’s attention back.

A lot of communications pieces make the company’s brand or the name of the newsletter (which some poor marketing assistant has spent weeks thinking up) the most noticeable item on the page.  While consistency in branding is absolutely imperative, it’s not about the name of the newsletter…it’s about what’s inside it.  Make the headline of the lead story the most visible item:  that’s the main point of writing to people, and that’s the piece of information that varies from week to week.  And, if it doesn’t, you’ve got a bigger problem with content than you might think.

Primacy and recency

If you want people to remember key points, put them either first or last.  Don’t put them in the wishy-washy middle, where they are least likely to be processed and remembered.  This is true in bulleted lists as well as longer prose pieces and it’s true in publication schedules too.

Publish at the very beginning or the very end of the (work) day.  Some days you’ll catch people when they come in to an empty inbox; other times, you’ll catch them as they are cleaning up before leaving for the day.  I used to get a newsletter that was delivered to my inbox every Friday at 6 p.m.  Who would think that would be a good time to publish?  But you know what, I always saw it, and most often read it, because nothing else was coming in at that time.  Where your communication allows for it, vary beginning and end of day publishing schedules, and you’ll have even more luck.

While it’s true that content “above the fold”–i.e., first or at the top of the front page–is most likely to be seen and read, it’s also true that not all readers read the same way (especially online).  In fact, you can count on most people reading only three things on the  page consistently:  1) the first paragraph; 2) the headlines; and 3) anything that is put in the form of a bulleted list.  Following in a distant fourth is anything in a call-out box (unless it’s a heading or bulleted list).  So, if you have material within your publication that you absolutely want people to read and pay attention to, put it one of these three places.

Habituation

Repetition is a memory aid; but too much repetition leads to habituation, a fancy word for becoming desensitized to previously-noticed stimuli.  If you have a regular column or repeating feature in your publication, try varying the placement, the style of headline and definitely any graphic that accompanies it.  Repetition is great for editorial management, but can backfire unless you can find a way to make that which repeats new and exciting each week, month or quarter.

Another tip:  newsletters, standardized marketing pieces and blog posts will often have a “call to action” buried in a footer or call-out box–somewhere in exactly the same place, with exactly the same wording, every issue.  This may be a “call us for more information…” or “to submit content to this publication, email …”.  Ok, same place, same formatting, buried in a spot that is not the intro paragraph, a headline or a bulleted section of text.  What are you going to do differently…?

Variable reinforcement schedules

Want your content to be noticed and remembered?  Create anticipation by establishing and then varying, within reasonable parameters, your publication schedule.  You will have created what’s known as a variable (or partial) reinforcement schedule, in which the “reward” (your content) is offered at unanticipated times.  This is what is happening in my RSS feeds on my homepage:  after ‘hooking’ me with their content, I now wait in anticipation for new content and click as soon as I see it.

An added bonus to a variable publication schedule is that—based on another psychological principle—your loyal readers will be more likely to rate the quality and value of your content more favourably if they’ve made an investment of time in waiting for it.  I call this the Heinz principle, after the “Anticipation” commercials of the late 70s.  Heinz would make you wait, but boy … was the wait worth it (it implied).  Of course, just be mindful that your product has to live up to its hype.

Also be careful because a variable schedule, if there is too long a time between reinforcements (i.e., publication), can lead to another principle called “extinction,” in which people stop responding at all.  This is especially hazardous if you are just establishing yourself with your reader base or if you published like clockwork for a significant period of time, and then dropped off the face of the earth for an extended period.

You need to gradually introduce variability into a publishing schedule and then become “constant in your inconstancy” within a window that is reasonable based on the media you are using.  For example, if you are a monthly, publishing within a few days on either side of month end would be reasonable.  If you are a quarterly, you might have 10 days on either side.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when it comes to establishing an editorial schedule:

  • Your publication schedule should conform with the expectations and parameters of the media.  A monthly twitter feed won’t do ya’ any good, toots—that medium’s speed is daily, at minimum.  A quarterly or even monthly blog post, where it’s your main channel for communicating with your audience, won’t build much traffic either.  Especially if you’re driving content from blogs out through other social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn updates, you probably need to be weekly, at minimum.
  • At least at first, you need to be consistent.  Start by setting a schedule, and announcing what it will be. Then, meet that schedule faithfully (this is what I refer to in my Six Cs of Communications as “opening a channel, and keeping it open”).  Once you’ve got the channel open and fairly well-established, then you can start to play with the schedule a bit.
  • Don’t let intentional variability be a result of laziness, lack of discipline or lack of content.  If you’re going to make a change, announce it well in advance so that it is seen clearly as an intentional strategy or–like Polldaddy’s specific direct at the outside–state upfront that your schedule will be variable within certain parameters.
  • If you find yourself struggling to meet a publication deadline, don’t even think of varying the publication deadline before you take a long, hard, cold look at the content.  Maybe you simply don’t have anything to say as frequently as you feel you need to say it?  Maybe you are not driving your contributors to be as punctual as they should be (when you are the editor AND the sole contributor, this can be a tough conversation you’ll be having with yourself!)  If either of these are true, your problem is not scheduling, it’s something a little deeper.

Content drives publication schedules.  As I’ve been writing about ad nauseum, content–its quality and its purpose–drives everything.

Here’s the summary lesson in all of this:  consistency is important in some aspects of communication, and where it is, you should be ruthless in your constancy.  In other areas, like anything that is more art than science, you should feel free to break the rules–but first know what they are, and then break them deliberately and strategically.