What is Rate My Content?
Rate My Content is a new content analysis and auditing tool that measures how engaging your content is for your audience.
By understanding how your content can better involve and capture your audience, you can make the recommended improvements to enhance your content so it is truly resonating with your users.
Use Rate My Content to take your website copy, marketing campaigns and blog content to the next level.
How does it work?
Rate My Content isn’t your usual content auditor. It doesn’t assess grammar, spelling or how keyword optimised your content for search engines.
Rate My Content analyses your content across 4 core areas to assess how engaging it is for your audience. The 4 areas Rate My Content analyses are:
Bore-o-meter:
The bore-o-meter focuses on how engaging and descriptive your content is. Naturally, people find descriptive words more exciting and enjoyable to read. They help to create a more gripping story that easily captures your audience. Low scores reflect a low amount of descriptive words whereas high scores show that a larger amount of engaging words have been used.
VAK-meter:
People tend to intrinsically prefer one of the three language styles: visual, auditory or kinaesthetic (VAK). People like to ‘see the picture’ (i.e. visual), ‘hear what you’re saying’ (i.e. sounds), or ‘get a feel for it’ (i.e. feelings) - these are just a few examples of how people’s VAK preferences vary in everyday language. It’s for this reason that a balance between VAK language is recommended, helping to engage all types of readers.
Static:dynamic-meter:
Language can be static and evoke clarity or it can be dynamic and evoke imagination. Are you attempting to explain something to your audience and define it? If so, this will trigger a higher static weighting. Or are you attempting to inspire your audience with imagination and future-thinking? If this is the case, you’ll receive a dynamically-weighted score.
Selfish:selfless-meter:
There is a difference in talking about what you sell and what your customer buys. We’ve created a score that helps to evaluate this. Low scores indicate that you’re talking about yourself more than your audience. Medium scores show that you're talking about your audience more than yourself. Lastly, high scores occur when there is a balance between you and your audience, clearly representing how you are able to meet your customers needs.
Examples - Fiat and Bentley
We have run two sets of content from car manufacturers through our tool - Fiat and Bentley.
Fiat and Bentley both scored an overall “Accept-a-ball” rating, meaning the content was good on the whole, but could do better to improve its engagement.
Fiat
In the Bore-o-meter category, we can see the Fiat content was engaging - using many exciting and descriptive words in our database. We’ve bolded a few below:
Make your presence known on the road with the sporty, aggressive and youthful new Tipo Sport. Ready to stand out from the crowd? Smartness and sportiness are connected. The new Tipo Sport is not only a fine embodiment of sportiness, it is also designed to offer you a smart and connected driving experience. With the Uconnect 7” touchscreen infotainment, available as standard with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, you can easily get directions, make and receive calls and set the perfect soundtrack for your journeys. All at the touch of a fingertip, or via an easy voice command, guaranteeing driving pleasure and sporty travel with no distractions.
The bold words are great examples of engaging words, helping to draw the reader in as they learn about the car’s features. Looking at the next score, the VAK-meter Fiat also scored high in using a lot of Kinaesthetic language - body and movement-related words, underlined above. People tend to have a preference to either visual, auditory or kinaesthetic words. It’s really important to try and get a balance across all three types of words so that you catch the attention of all three types of people.
Looking at the Static:dynamic-meter the content does well at drawing attention to the present features of the car but doesn’t do a great job at creating a story for the user about how the car will benefit them in the future. The best kinds of content get a good balance of both, drawing attention to the present but making the reader imagine the future also.
Analysing its score on the Selfish:selfless meter the content is selfless, using many words such as “your” and “you” to talk mostly about the reader and what they can do with the car. Ideally, the content would get a nice balance, perhaps emphasising more their work on the development of the car’s technology, their history or wider ethos.
Bentley
Bentley scored “Unengaging” on the Bore-o-meter, opting for plain and factual language when describing the EXP 100 GT:
The most memorable journeys take place inside and outside a car. Occupant travel preferences will be pre-loaded in any future Bentley across the world, whether heading out on the Pacific Coast Highway in California or the Great Ocean Road in Australia. Our global network of partners provides authentic experiences for any distance or destination. Luxury services make trips memorable as the journey unfolds through local hotel recommendations, luxury goods, or wellbeing and nutritional ideas. After a day of exploring, pure water and refreshments are presented on return to the car, preempting any requests and revitalising tired occupants.
The bolded text above shows why this content may have received an unengaging score, as it uses very concrete, unemotive language to communicate car features. In order to improve this score, the content could have opted for more exciting adjectives to bring the safety features to life.
Unlike the Fiat example, Bentley have not used any language to trigger emotion from people who are either visually, auditory, kinaesthetically driven when assessed on the VAK-meter. The lack of emotion means that it is less likely for consumers to be engaged with the content.
Analysing the Static:dynamic-meter they received a dynamic score which means that their content is very future driven. Whilst it is good for the content to use dynamic and imaginative words, it is also good to use static words as these give clarity and factual information.
Assessing the Selfish:selfless-meter the content received a selfish score with no direct pronouns being used in regard to the customer. Rather than focussing on what Bentley do and how good they are at doing it, they should try and focus on how the car benefits the customer.
Want to give your own content a try?
Visit Rate My Content and paste your content with your brand identifiers. These are usually your brand name or a specific product that you are talking about. E.g Fiat, Tipo Sport. You can then get your results sent to you via email so you can keep them to look back on.
