This one weird trick saves days when creating content!

I was reminded of something recently. A trick, maybe? Let's call it a creative technique.

And no, it isn't about creating headlines that begin "one weird trick."

This is even better! And I love you so much that I'm going to share it.

This means I can't use it. All my colleagues will know. They'll be looking out for it.

This technique can save substantial amounts of time and effort for anybody who commercially creates content. Experienced content creators probably already know, but here it is:

• Number your first draft #4.

Why?

It's about who reviews your content, and how they review it.

Starting with a draft number of #4, instead of #1, nearly always cuts out the following kinds of reviewers (and, yes, this is the start of a rant):

(1) Folks who believe they fail if they don't provide feedback.

Any feedback. But they must provide always feedback. Nobody has told them that returning a draft without mark-up, or minimal mark-up, is absolutely fine.

Your content might be good to go, to the extent it's a slam-dunk for an industry award. But these people will still nit-pick. And they pick, and pick, and pick, until the whole thing unravels.

(2) Folks who have a certain level of importance.

This importance is such that, if they don't provide feedback on your copy, they fear everybody will forget how important they are.

Senior staff must show they're senior. Bosses must boss.

Providing feedback on your content is an existential struggle for these folks.

If there's nothing wrong with your copy then they will find something – and then haggle about it like a Marrakesh market trader.

(3) Folks who aren't invested in the success of the content – but are involved anyway.

Maybe the content's subject matter falls into their remit or department. Maybe the content has some loose connection to what they do.

It's officially determined that this person should, therefore, be in the loop. Almost out of politeness. It doesn't matter that this person has never reviewed content before. It doesn't matter if they're not the kind of person who ever views the kind of content you've created. Suddenly they're an expert.

Oh dear. This isn't going to end well.

And that leads us to the final point...

(4) Some folks just don't know anything about content.

You've spent hours skilfully creating that SEO-optimised headline. It's so good that it will crash Google.

And your reviewer scores through it, adding a comment that they were taught in school never to use the second person pronoun.

You can try to (a) explain your years of SEO experience and learning to them, or (b) just delete that headline.

There is something about v.1 of a draft that invites the worst from people. It’s an invitation to a bare-knuckle fight. Draft #1 cannot be any good. It must be beaten into shape.

Otherwise decent people turn into pedants.

If v.4 falls across an email inbox then, maybe, the pedantic work has already been done by the people who reviewed #1, #2 and #3. Nothing to do here. Move on.

Of course, any colleagues actually invested in the work – your creative colleagues, or the people who want the content to succeed – will still review it regardless of the version number. You might still get the same quantity of feedback (and there's nothing wrong with feedback!). But there's a stronger chance of this being good quality, useful feedback that aims to improve the content – both in terms of its effectiveness for the business, and improving the craft behind it.

If anybody questions why you're starting with v.4, just say you iterated it four times on your own before making available the version they're seeing.

I'm not advocating dishonesty here. Well, okay, I am. But I want to point out that I've never used this technique myself. I try to manage review processes so it’s never needed. Often this is as simple as keeping the review group small, or fighting back against pedantic edits by mentioning supporting data (which is why testing can be good – it not only improves results, but gives you a weapon to use in any review combat).

Sometimes I’m brave enough to simply ignore a pedantic edit. It’s worth remembering that, because the edit is unnecessary, the person suggesting it will probably forget about it.

But this doesn't mean you can't use this technique – if you need to. Let me know down below in the comments if you’ve any other useful tricks like this to expedite the content creation and review process.