How to Solve Clay Shirky's Filter Failure Problem

(See below for full 24-minute Shirky video on "Filter Failure")

What can you and other journalists do to help audiences "filter" through the information and find yours?

To help audiences filter out irrelevant information but find yours: 

• Target your information to the appropriate audience 
• Keep it brief 
• Make the first word or two of your title serve as the filter

Target Your Information To The Appropriate Audience

Journalists create filters all the time, because they ask themselves: “why should a reader/viewer care?” That’s also a question that PR professionals ask about their audiences. The honest answer to that question tells you who your audience is and what they want. If your audience doesn’t care about Kim Kardashian - or about new clean air act standards - you are wasting your time trying to persuade them to be interested.

It’s easiest to create a filter for the appropriate audience when you are talking about a niche of some kind - for example, energy and environmental news or health news. Many people are interested in the consumer aspect of “green energy”, for example, or in finding out whether vitamin pills are worth the money. Those stories work for a broad consumer audience. It’s harder to find an audience interested in the details of the Marcellus Shale business, or in a cure for a rare disease. Those stories work for audiences who are looking to drill down from the general topic to a more specific one. 

How do you filter for the appropriate audience?

1. Use a consumer hook for the more general story: How to Keep Energy Bills Green; You Are Wasting Your Money on Vitamins
2. Use a technical term or industry term for the first words of a story about a more specific topic: Marcellus Shale Plays Far Smaller than Predicted: New Study

Keep It Brief

The success of Twitter tells us how long people want their first cut at a piece of information to be. 140 characters is a good length. There is generally a link to more information and a longer story, but not always. The 140 character limit imposes discipline and forces a journalist/PR pro to make decisions about what will compel a reader to want more. It’s much harder to write a short piece than a long one.

Make the First Word or Two of Your Title Serve as the Filter

1. “New” is always a good term for a headline - that filter tells us that we haven’t read this story yet
2. “Online” or “Social Media” tell a reader to stop and see if this is for him/her
3. A story that starts with “DC Officials” is a story with little interest for Montgomery County readers or Prince George’s County reader; similarly, stories entitled “Fairfax County Public Schools...” are of little interest to those outside that county. 
4. Imagine that your first sentence is your headline. Grab the readers you want by putting the most important information in a succinct first sentence. “The K Street lobbyist accused of bribing dozens of members of Congress went to prison today.” “Facebook - with several hundred million ‘friends’ - claimed a new one today - investor Warren Buffett.”