Content of the Week #1

Welcome to Content of the Week, where I choose the Content that Contented me the most and talk about why it’s good Content.

My subjective criteria for good content is:

• Did a lot of people like it (i.e. more than 500 people. Maybe more than 100 if it’s a slow week)
• Did it do something different
• Did it do its job superbly
• Did it make me laugh
• Did it teach me something new

I will also ask the people who did the content why they did it. Sometimes they will not respond to my emails. I will then write about the content anyway.

In this case, they did reply to my first email but then were probably too busy fending off real journalists to reply to my second email.

Because The Content Of The Week is 

Beamish and their Gen-Z TikTok

I could just as easily chosen Hever Castle’s video but I saw Beamish’s first. Technically, I saw Curry’s do it first but I don’t give a flying fuck about microwaves.

The concept is simple. Get a middle-aged or older person, and have them use Gen-Z slang to describe things – in this case the various buildings, vehicles, re-enactments and recreations of 19th-20th century northern English life.

It’s funny because:

• It uses the Straight Man formula. There’s a man in a suit referring to things with Gen-Z slang matter-of-factly. We know he doesn’t normally talk like this, he knows we know, we know he knows we know.
• Things are described as ‘lit’ when they are demonstrably not ‘lit’ (unless you’re into industrial heritage, which I am).

On top of that you’re compelled to keep watching because of their commitment to the bit, and the classic TikTok style of cycling through scenes at a rapid pace, never allowing you to get bored.

This is one of those videos which technically anyone could do. We’ve all been there when a trend or a format is starting to kick off, you kind of consider doing it, things get in the way and by the time you get around to doing it the trend has already passed.

What Beamish obviously did was notice the trend, think ‘we could do that’, grab their phone, brief some colleagues and publish the video.

The second thing with this kind of content is people usually ask: well, what did it achieve?

Well, as of writing it’s been watched 5.6 million times, it’s been liked by 1.1 million people and nearly 10,000 people have commented.

Some of those people commenting say they want to visit, others are offering ideas like recreating the video but with 19th/20th century slang, and a lot of them are just saying they love it. That’s a lot of goodwill, potential visits and an algorithmic boost for probably less than a day’s work.

So what can you learn about this bit of content? I’d say:

• Spend too much time on TikTok to find out when trends begin
• If there’s nothing to lose, then act. Just get your phone, do it and see if people like it.
• Wear a suit and be more Brian.

What else I’m thinking about

Both the Beamish video and this MERL tweet on Pannage Autumn got me thinking again about reactive content. 

I think there’s an overreliance in the sector on The Content Calendar, where we identify what we talk about, we plan for some nice videos or articles, then we publish those things and call it a day. 

That’s a good way of going about 60% of what you do, and it’s necessary, but time and again the most popular posts are those which react to something current. We spend too little time being a part of the internet community – whether because of time, aversion to risk or a lack of confidence. I think that needs to change.

What I’m…

Playing: I’ve given Cities Skyline 2 another chance. I’ve now played about 15 hours and I’d describe it as Decent, even if cars randomly disappear and there’s gaping holes where eventual DLC will slot. But if you like creating unwieldy cities full of roundabouts, fires and spaghetti-junction railways then it’s worth a punt.

Reading: I’ve started reading The Monk just because it was the next book in the pile, and I can’t remember why I got it in the first place. It’s very Gothic and I think it’s mainly going to be about monks having sex and feeling bad about it.

Watching: I have a 10-month old baby so I’m sick of CBeebies, with the sole exception of Hey Duggee, Bluey and Sarah and Duck. So what I’m saying is I found Hey Duggee on iPlayer and I’ve watched a whole season in a day. The way the kids hug Duggee and their parents makes me want to cry.