Not all feedback is helpful: Effective feedback vs useless feedback

Creative feedback is oh-so-important—it's how we grow, refine our ideas, and ultimately produce better work. But because creativity is inherently subjective, feedback on creative work operates by a different set of rules.

The tricky part? Not all feedback is created equal. Some feedback can propel your work forward, while other comments might leave you confused, demoralized, or heading down the wrong path (or worse: multiple, conflicting paths) entirely.

Here's how to differentiate between useful feedback and useless feedback for creatives, whether it's for your peers or your team.

What effective feedback looks like

Okay, so what does useful feedback actually look like? Good feedback should offer concrete guidance for improvement, combining characteristics like:

• Focus on specific issues: Generic statements like "change this" and "this isn't good" aren't helpful to anyone—useful feedback pinpoints the exact area of improvement like "the sentence structure doesn't quite work here" or "the call to action could be stronger".
• Offer actionable suggestions: Go beyond identifying problems by providing specific solutions or suggestions, eg. "Consider A/B testing a different call to action to see if it improves click-through rates".
• Align with project objectives: Directly relate your feedback to overall goals and success metrics of the company and/or project itself, ensuring it contributes to hitting those desired goals.

3 signs you're offering useless feedback

Then we've got feedback that is... not so good. This is the kinda feedback that is subjective, vague, and ultimately unhelpful to the person receiving it. Here's how to spot useless feedback:

• You're super general: If you've got no specific examples or concrete instances, it becomes pretty hard to take action on feedback—that means no "this design isn't visually appealing" and stopping there, okay?
• There are no actionable solutions: Simply pointing out a problem without offering suggestions, hints, or even vague solutions is not a valuable form of feedback.
• You're making it subjective: Don't take away from the OG creator's vision and creativity by sticking your own mark on it—step into their shoes and see where could be objectively improved.

How to refine your feedback process

Here's how peers and more specifically, marketing leaders can ensure feedback is actionable (and not seen as criticism):

• Establish clear objectives: Make sure everyone understands the project goals and success metrics before giving feedback, or aligning your feedback with these goals.
• Provide solutions (don't just highlight issues): Use feedback as a part of a learning process—by providing solutions, suggestions, or some sort of direction can help the person receiving the feedback to learn and develop.
• Create a culture of open communication: Normalize (useful) feedback by speaking openly about its value and learnings, and including a thought-out feedback process in your content creation workflows.
• Provide specific feedback guidelines: ... and speaking of "thought-out", think about specific guidelines that your team can follow when providing feedback.
• Filter and prioritize: Always ask yourself "is this comment really necessary?" to avoid the more subjective critique coming through, and stick to feedback points that will help the content creator learn and be inspired.
• Balance constructive criticism with positivity: Ensure your feedback process isn't demotivating by including positive feedback too... because who doesn't love a compliment?
• Be respectful and timely: Deliver feedback promptly while the task is still fresh—or at least with the final deadline in mind—using respectful (non-stressful) language, of course.

Check out 3 feedback frameworks for creative teams (plus a load of other manager tips).

Let the feedback flow in your workflow

With open communication and by integrating feedback processes seamlessly into your workflow, you'll see a whole lot less disruption and whole lot less time waiting around for it.

With Optimizely Content Marketing Platform, consider your content supply chain totally centralized. You you can create, collaborate, feedback, publish, and store content all through one platform, providing your teams with workflows that just, well... flow.

Check out what Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (and its embedded AI) has to offer.