And why I always keep it open in my taskbar for my professional growth.
It doesn’t happen too often, I’ll tell you that – but with Zest it was love at first sight. That’s why it’s so easy to say why I love them.
Because they are among the few companies out there who are not about the money.
For them it’s all about the quality.
And indeed, if I were to define them in a couple of words, I’d definitely say: quality guaranteed!
Zest – in a nutshell
For those of you who haven’t heard about them, let me go back for a moment and tell you a couple of things about Zest.
| What? | Zest is a platform that curates the latest and, most importantly, the highest quality articles out there in the field of marketing.
Zest’s mission is to promote the articles that are meant to educate people in terms of marketing. In their own words, “Zest is all about sharing powerful content for the sake of education.”
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| Why? | The platform was created to be that one place where you don’t have to lose time with irrelevant or low quality marketing materials.
Time is precious, and so Zest selects and promotes only the stellar-quality articles based on their content, not on the number of clicks or the name behind the article. |
| Who? | Zest has a legion of crazy passionate guys who position themselves as a tribe of marketers. They are the ones in charge of selecting the content that is to be published. |
| How? | 1. Strict selection process and guidelines
Zest has a draconian process of article selection, so that only the best of the best are promoted and offered to you in your news feed according to the fields of interest you’ve selected. Any article that is submitted has to be read and approved by a number of experts to make sure the choices are objective. And they follow a set of very strict guidelines in order never to compromise on quality. The proof? Even articles written by big names in the industry are sometimes rejected if they don’t follow one of the criteria of selection. |
| 2. Machine learning algorithms
The tribe’s efforts are backed by machine learning algorithms that scan and check the content for duplicates, language mistakes, misquotes etc, and filter the audio and video content, making sure the article is up to par. | |
| 3. Offering advice for improvement
If an article has a lot of potential but still needs a bit of tweaking, the staff at Zest will send their suggestions for a title change or maybe an image adjustment etc. – whatever is needed to make the difference. “Every single article gets a lot of love and attention from the Zest tribe; all the details are scrutinized and checked thoroughly before getting published.”
It all boils down to the value the consumer gets in their feed. So nothing slips through the cracks. |
What else do I love about Zest?
Well, passion is another thing I was really impressed with when it comes to Zest.
Talking with some of the staff there, I was blown away by their sheer enthusiasm. When you feel lucky to work somewhere and you describe your activity as cool, fun and useful – that’s when you produce your best work. And that’s what they do over there.
And isn’t that appropriate – since the very name of the company, Zest, means ‘great enthusiasm and energy’?
Another crucial thing that I personally like about this platform is their dark theme. Yes, you heard me right: the dark theme. I know, it’s a vanity thing really, but as a Mac user, I’ll always appreciate a dark theme.
All jokes aside, what I love most about Zest is that they stick by their core values and principles:
1. Quality quality quality
As I mentioned above, Zest never compromises on quality. Never! It’s their #1 principle.
They don’t look at the name behind the article, they look at the content.
| 1% | In fact, can you imagine that only around 1% of the submissions make the cut and end up in your zest feed? |
That number includes the staff’s very own articles. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the articles submitted by the staff go through the same selection process as the others, and can also (and actually do) get rejected.
In fact, talking to members of the Zest tribe, I found out that the boosting procedure is even tighter than the regular article selection process – just to make extra sure that only the crème de la crème is promoted.
Given the fact that they make their revenue exclusively from boosts, this says it all about their work ethics.
2. Build communities
Zest is not just another site where you can read the latest marketing news.
The staff has always wanted to, and managed to create an online community, which they actually keep in touch with on a regular basis. For instance, it’s not unheard of for a user email to be followed by a 30-40 email thread. Just because they really take pleasure in talking with you.
Spoiler alert: During our collaboration with Zest I found out that in the near future you’ll manage to have your own personalized feed on Zest based on your specific areas of interest.
That’s because first-time visitors are usually blown away by the sheer amount of amazing content on Zest. In order not to be overwhelmed, you can choose between a large variety of tags (31 to be precise) related to the areas of expertise you are interested in, and become part of a sub-community rather than a huge, unmanageable community.
3. Inspire and encourage writers
If you want to improve your content and copywriting skills, my advice is to join Zest.
Why? Because Zest is taking seriously the concept of community and helps out its members who are asking for advice.
Even if an article hasn’t made the cut, Zest encourages people to continue writing by offering advice on how to get better at copywriting.
For instance, what they did for a good half a year or more was completely outstanding: they went out of their way and took the time to write personalised emails to every single person who was asking for advice – with suggestions on how to improve their style.
Nowadays they have come up with a set of general guidelines on the topic.
All this just to inspire people to produce better writing and up their game. And it’s all for the sake of educating other marketers.
This is how an email from the CEO himself looks like:
“People can see right through if you’re not acting like you would with your friends. Which is why we embrace it. The personal touch deepens the bonds with your users and yields many benefits in the long-term and all it takes is to be yourself.”
Yam Regev, Co-Founder and CEO at Zest
4. Keep it fun
Despite their high standards which are backed by their massive expertise, they encourage and promote a very cozy and relaxed atmosphere within their communities.
Their motto is: “Keep it light, keep it fun!”
They strongly believe that behind every screen, there’s going to be a person who really wants to talk about their post with a chill, personal tone of voice. That contributes to the whole consumer experience as well, because people feel they belong to a gang where they feel safe.
“That’s why we call it the tribe, you know, a tribal market. We try not to differentiate anyone. We try not to act formal. So, we’re here for everyone. We’re here to spread education. And we like to keep it in a fun way as well.”
Karolis Vanagas, Growth and Partnerships Manager, Zest
Here’s how it feels like working with them:
Pretty cool, right?
5. Keep changing and improving
To offer the best experience for its users, Zest strongly believes that it needs to continuously improve their services and grow with the market, so they have a few surprises in store for you.
They are going to implement a couple of new features that are going to revamp Zest completely.
Here are a few spoilers:
- They’re planning to remove all the clicks, completely – for 2 main reasons:
- all the pieces that passed the selection process deserve to be equal. The number of clicks shouldn’t define how good the content is, so that users can search the content with a clear mind, without the influence of the other users.
- even if this metric were to show the quality of the article, it can hardly be calculated correctly due to the spam clicks which are inflating the total score.
- They are going to personalize the feed as much as possible based on what you are interested in, your engagement and availability, and on the reading time of the article.
“You’re going to get the best content available. It is funneled down to what is relevant for you to develop as a professional.”
Karolis Vanagas, Growth and Partnerships Manager, Zest
3. The quality control of the articles is going to get even tighter, just to make sure you get only the best of the best.
So there, have I given you enough reasons to love Zest?
And by the way – there was no payment involved in writing this. I really love them!
So, just try it out – I promise you won’t regret it!
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