Zest members, say ‘YO’ to the Content Assessment Machine
The internet is packed with content, but only a small percentage of it is worth the busy professional’s time. Yet, as marketers, failing to gain new skills and knowledge means failing to achieve peak performance.
As the idea of Zest began to form, we asked ourselves, how can we help? How can we as part of the greater community of marketers help our peers hone their craft and stay up to date on the latest marketing methods and trends without experiencing what author Mark Schaefer calls content shock?
Of course, other companies have tried to solve this problem. They have solicited content from users, sorted content using algorithms (StumbleUpon), and employed voting systems (Inbound.org) to select what content their platform users see.
But for the Zest solution, we wanted something better. We wanted a system that would serve the Zest tribe with the content they need, not just the content that an algorithm says they want.
As we evaluated what types of content delivered the most value to us as marketers, we realized that quality content cannot be judged based on just clicks or likes. I mean, sure, who doesn’t like a good cat gif now and then? But what we need as a marketing community is to learn from one another, to develop our skills, and share our experience.
We also knew that machine learning could help us curate better content for the Zest community. But, machines can also be manipulated. We’ve all seen examples of bad content getting wide distribution because it had the support of a pod of users intent upon gaming the system. Blech!
We began to look for a solution by examining our own experience with finding skill-building content as professionals. Where we found the most value was in the content shared by trusted colleagues and associates. Unfortunately, these individual shares get little distribution. The best marketing knowledge was siloed. Unless a content publisher manipulates the current systems to gain social media likes and shares, or raises the content’s profile using SEO methods, the majority of marketers may never see it. And, marketers wanting to see something new and informative may have to spend a lot of time searching for it.
So we asked, how could we locate and share quality content, the kind shared between trusted colleagues, on a larger scale?
We found the answer when we recognized the power of community — Zest members were the key. The secret to making something different, something better. The key to defeating information overload and putting an end to content shock.
Zest is a member-driven tribe of marketing professionals. Each member has a role to play, helping the community as a whole to find, distribute and learn from the best content every day.
This is how we make it all happen.
The Zest community: A tribe of marketers raising the content standards for all
Zest is a dynamic example of the heterogeneous network described in the breakthrough article, The Network Effects Bible. In the article, James Currier and the NFX team note that network effects have fueled 70% of all tech-created value since 1994!
Zest’s growth is fueled almost entirely by its amazing members. Every new Zest member contributes something different and makes the Zest community more valuable to every other user. As the Zest tribe grows, this network effect becomes even stronger.
The majority of Zest members are consumers. These are professional marketers who rely on Zest as a source of fresh, relevant marketing content. These tribe members inspire and guide Zest’s content distillation processes. They come to Zest for content that will help them learn and develop expertise in their domain. We learn more about their needs by tracking the content they save, consume, and share.
The next group of members are the Zest contributors . They are the tribe’s hunters. They suggest content to be shared with the community.
Zest contributors fuel the tribe’s growth with a continual supply of new marketing resources. This is not an exclusive group and it continuously grows. Any Zest member may suggest marketing-related content to the Zest tribe. Zest tribe members may suggest their own content or relevant content created by others. The Zest community enjoys discovering new content producers through the members’ suggestions.
Finally, a group of Zest tribe members also serve as Chief Moderators. This is a growing cohort of Zest members who have agreed to lend their skill and expertise to ensuring the quality of the content that reaches the Zest content stream. Zest Chief Moderators are experts in their select domains — SEO, Growth, Metrics, Content, etc. Chief Moderators are the tribe’s leaders and mentors; they evaluate each content suggestion to make sure it is Zesty enough to feed the minds of hungry tribe members. We call these successful content suggestions Zests.
Now, our reliance on Zest members doesn’t mean that we don’t use machines to help filter and distill that quality content. We do. In fact, in the past month we have built an amazing content assessment machine that helps the tribe’s human distillers evaluate each piece of Zest content before it hits the Zest members’ content stream.
This perfect combination of machine and human intelligence is Zest’s secret recipe for success.
Zest content distillation: A human-machine hybrid solution
As the saying goes, garbage in = garbage out. So, to get the best content and avoid serving up less-than Zesty links to members, the content distillation process needs a good filtration system. We need something that ensures that the Chief Moderators don’t have to spend time sorting out bad links, out-of-date information, and poorly written content before they can evaluate the good stuff.
Before the Chief Moderators assess the quality of a content suggestion, it has to pass through a screening process. This 1st moderation phase checks each suggestion against a set of baseline standards.
To date, humans have performed the 1st moderation phase for Zest content. Those humans have been providing valuable information that we have used to build the Content Assessment Machine. Through machine learning, members’ and moderators’ responses to content have taught the Content Assessment Machine to apply our phase 1 standards.
Now, the Content Assessment Machine is ready for its first solo flight. With this advance, the Content Assessment Machine will do the initial screening work, freeing its human teachers to focus solely on assessing the content’s subjective quality — a skill no machine can replicate.
Once the Content Assessment Machine is running at full-speed, Zest will be able to review more content suggestions than ever before, enhancing the network effect for Zest members even more. Of course, this also means that we’ll be looking for more members to perform that final quality assessment step as Chiefs (hint, hint).
That’s a big step forward for Zest because building such a machine means expediting the moderation process which leads to the ability to scale the product and sustain our community’s growth.
The Zest Content Assessment Machine: How it works
The Zest Content Assessment Machine filters each content suggestion and distills only the posts that provide the Zest community of marketers with the utmost value. Like lemon zest enhances the flavor of your food — bringing out its best, Zest’s distillation process enhances your content stream.
Because we take a huge amount of suggested content, then pass it through a series of machine learning, content moderation modules and human evaluations to achieve a highly-refined final product — the Zest content. Distillation removes pollutants like keyword-stuffed fluff pieces, in-your-face branded content, and outdated advice from the Zest content stream. In the end, Zest members are left with easily consumable, on-point, relevant content that helps them improve their talent, becoming more T-shaped professionals.
What happens during content assessment and distillation?
- First, the suggested link is validated to ensure that it leads to real content and that the source page isn’t broken. We don’t want to share gibberish or 404 messages with Zest members.
- Next, we check to make sure the content hasn’t been previously suggested by another member. Content only gets to be a Zest once. This limitation prevents the same piece from being posted multiple times by users trying to game the system. Plus, discovering that someone else has already suggested the same content helps both the machine & Zest members identify fellow Zesters with whom they may share common interests.
- Once these two steps are completed, the Zest Distillation Machine begins processing the content data. In this step, we capture the content’s title, image and the metadata description which will later be displayed in the content stream.
- Then, the text of the content goes through a machine learning magic box, which determines the posts tags (you know, the ones you can select to filter your content stream). This magic machine also does some clustering abracadabra for cool and new functionalities which we’ll be introducing in future releases. I promise to publish an amazing post about this stage later — pinkie swear.
- Finally, the Zest Chief Moderators get their chance to assess the content. They make the final Zest or no call. There’s no replacement for the human touch when it comes to evaluating a content piece’s value to the tribe.
Of course, the Content Assessment Machine is continuing to gain skills. You see, we prefer to move forward in small iterations. Step by step, we are testing new features and teaching the machine to handle more complex reviews such as determining whether content is blocked by a paywall or not written in English. As we continue to expand the capabilities of the Content Assessment Machine, there will be even more need for members to help moderate the expert, actionable content that Zest community suggests each day.
The next product scalination: The Chiefs Zone
As a member-based network, Zest can’t serve up the best content for marketers without a dedicated team of Chief Moderators. We need your expertise to ensure that every Zest is worthy of the tribe’s time.
In a few weeks we will open another new group of Chief Moderators so, please let us know if you want to join the team and help us deliver high-fidelity marketing content to the Zest marketing tribe.
Become a Zest Chief and fight content overload
By becoming a part of the marketing tribe, you will be fueling the engine that makes the best professional content available to everyone.
Yes! I want to become a Chief << click to send us an email
Tonya Parker, thank you so much for helping me write this post 💖
