Venkatesh Rao

Not great for traffic, but if you’re tracking a topic long-term for a series, searching for mentions will also serve as a dragnet for fresh fodder. “Premium mediocre” and “domestic cozy” are examples of my own. Memorable as compounds, good listeners as search (w/o quotes)

The trick is to keep the individual words literally salient while keeping combinations memorable. “Gervais principle” for example is not a good listener term for info on sociopathy/office politics/org theory. It will mainly surface celeb gossip besides my mentions.

“Breaking smart” is a very bad listener term. It works for human resonance partly via reference to “breaking bad” but search bycatch is almost entirely about broken smartphones and gadget troubles Heh search bycatch is a good term... you want high serendipity bycatch

“Art of Gig” is a fine joke as a play on “Art of War” but bad listener. Mainly catches people talking about art gigs rather than the gig economy or consulting life in general.

Listener headlines are a tactic in a broader strategy of unbranding. Unbranding is sacrificing discoverability and fame for longevity and underground positioning. Prioritizing sustainability and relationships over audience acquisition. Accepting slow WOM-only growth.

Unbranding does not necessarily mean you’re producing a commodity. It simply means you’re not signaling uniqueness or differentiation overtly, because assets traditionally devoted to branding losing leverage, becoming wasted on branding, and better used for other things.

The higher the noise and arms race dynamics in the public environment, the louder branded things have to scream to get noticed, and the more resources they hog in the project. At some point the tail of branding strategy wags the dog of project purpose.

Brand enough to indicate contents and have some fun, but don’t let brand optimization consume the rest of the project. And don’t mistake structural elements like headlines (which serve many purposes) for functionally fixed branding-monopolized elements.