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Every Marketer Says You Need “Taste”. Here’s What That Actually Means

Every Marketer Says You Need “Taste”. Here’s What That Actually Means

For the first time ever, anyone can make content in seconds.

With just a couple of prompts, an LLM can generate an entire blog post that you can publish on your website. A solopreneur or a marketing team of one can pump out newsletters, social media content, ad copy, and blog posts without breaking a sweat.

This should be revolutionary. But it has created a new problem.

Nobody can find anything worth reading.

Tweet from Gael Breton saying "everyone wants to create AI content but nobody wants to read it"

When anyone can create, creation alone isn’t valuable anymore. Instead, something else becomes invaluable: the ability to know what’s actually worth making.

We call this taste.

popular brands that have the most YouTube or branded web mentions. Taste means the opposite: being able to cite an obscure essay, the academic paper, or the personal obsession that creates unexpected combinations. Your reference library is a map of your mind.
  • Tone — Can readers identify your work without seeing your byline? Do you maintain your perspective even when it’s unfashionable?
  • Editing — Deletion is a taste decision. What do you cut? Are you willing to cut?
  • Timing — Do you know when to speak and when to wait? When to ride a trend and when it’s already exhausted? And do you know when your take would add value versus when it would just add noise?

    • More importantly, it shows up in every member of your content marketing team.

    I sincerely believe one of the reasons why our blog is well-known is because each member of the content team makes excellent taste-driven decisions.

    We’re not looking for an assembly line where each content marketer fills in the blanks to hit a goal of producing as many articles as possible. We genuinely want to make great content, and we know that great content builds brand and awareness, and therefore we hyper-invest in it.

    We look for content marketers who have taste and distinctive points of view, are able to defend their choices, and who’ve developed clear expertise. We hire for judgment and not just execution. And we trust each individual to make taste-driven decisions and stand for themselves.

    Culinary Class Wars is one of the hottest variety programs on Netflix. The judge, Sung-Jae Ahn, may be a respected chef with three Michelin stars, but he’s also able to articulate—extremely clearly—why he thinks a dish worked or didn’t.

    As you’re consuming, think about asking yourself these questions:

    • Why does this work?
    • What do I like about it?
    • How would I improve upon it?
    • What does the “me” version look like?

    Put in your reps

    Notice I said that “taste” is compressed experience. And guess what? If you want experience, you have to do.

    There’s no way around it. You have to make a lot of editorial decisions (some good, some bad, but mostly bad) before your taste becomes reliable.

    Every time you do, every time you analyze your work, you’re practicing and building taste.

    Judgment only improves with volume. You want to do 100 things. Write 100 essays. Make 100 YouTube videos. Post 100 times on LinkedIn. Create 100 TikTok videos.

    As Scott Young writes:

    Quote from Scott Young saying how you need to have written at least a hundred essays first

    When you’ve done 100, do more. I’m 154 articles in and I feel like I’m only getting started.

    Number of articles I've written for Ahrefs so far

    My taste is developing but it’s nowhere good yet. But trust the process, put in the reps, and it’ll come.

    Tweet from Visakan showing how prolific Picasso was

    Create feedback loops with your audience

    Even if you’re gratifying your own taste, your work ultimately needs to be seen and accepted by an audience. So don’t work in a silo and don’t work in stealth.

    Put your work out there, then talk to people. Have conversations. Online and offline. What do they reference back to you? What do they share with others? What makes them reply “this is exactly what I needed”?

    DM from another writer appreciating one of my posts

    Having taste and a point of view isn’t to massage your ego; it is to serve your audience and help them move forward.

    Accept that taste alienates as much as it attracts

    “The best art divides the audience, where if you put out a record, and half the people who hear it absolutely love it, and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well because it’s pushing that boundary. If everyone thinks, oh that’s pretty good, why bother making it? It doesn’t mean as much.” — Rick Rubin 

    If everyone loves your work, you’re probably not making strong enough choices. A distinctive point of view naturally repels people who don’t share it.

    Polarisation is a feature, not a bug.

    But too many people take this to mean they should intentionally create polarisation. No. Polarisation happens because you’re gratifying your taste and your genuine and sincere understanding of why something should be that way sometimes grinds others’ gears.

    Not because you’re saying something controversial (even though you don’t believe it) or ragebaiting people online.

    Final thoughts

    The Internet removed the gatekeepers of publishing content. Today, AI has removed the gatekeepers of creating content. Production is no longer the bottleneck.

    The new, scarce skill is the skill of knowing what’s worth making.

    In a world where everyone can create, the only sustainable differentiation is judgment about what should be created.

    Here’s the opportunity for you: most brands will use AI to chase efficiency and cut costs. They’re more than happy to sacrifice a modicum of quality and abandon taste in order to save more money. They’ll produce rivers of acceptable content that nobody remembers.

    The brands that win will be the ones that slow down, that develop point of view, that make strong choices.

    They’ll publish less and matter more. 

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