How to avoid over-polishing your content

What do corporate programmers and corporate communicators have in common? More than you think.

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I often have difficulty releasing my code. I want to fine-tune it until it’s perfect, although, as programmers know, that’s nearly impossible given the pressing deadlines and priority shifts that dictate our days.

I know that PR and communications professionals can relate. So how do we know when to stop making tweaks and start wrapping things up?

Here are a few things I’ve learned from writing and editing code at AirPR that may help you decide when to move on to your next project.

How relevant or important is what you’re writing?

Consider why you’re creating what you’re creating. A software feature may be driven by an important customer’s needs or a recent event (like Facebook’s profile-photo features that launch after tragedies such as the Paris bombings). In these cases, we usually don’t have the time to perfect code.

In PR and communications, you always consider these outside pressures, too. From client priorities to funding announcements, different levels of pressure may inspire different levels of polish and emphasis. If a pitch is topical, for example, you move fast to land the story, and that may mean less fine-tuning.

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