Today David from 37signals published this post, where he complained that he was:

“…sick and tired of hearing about how you should be producing “content” to attract a web following. Treating content as a category on its own is missing the point entirely. Nobody cares about content. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, hey, I should read some content today.”

My first impulse is to agree.

Good Content Is More Than An Output Stream

I love the idea of foregoing labels and treating what many content strategists, web writers and bloggers do as an outpouring of “ideas, analysis and insights” which work best when they emerge naturally and from our day-to-day experiences.

And I like David’s idea that we produce better stuff when we’re inspired or close to a topic, than we do when adhering to a rigid publishing schedule. Typically, the resulting product is more interesting and thought-provoking. People often like it more.

As David’s post suggests, really good content amounts to more than an output stream. Publishers, writers and everyone else in between need to frame what we’re doing appropriately.

On Publishing

And yet, the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to disagree with a few of David’s points. And with this point in particular:

“This also means that it’s hard to schedule. You can’t put neatly into timeslots when you’re going to be annoyed, ecstatic, disappointed, have a great insight or discover a new awesome technique… The great thing is that it doesn’t really matter that much anyway whether you follow a tight schedule.”

I agree that great content is hard to schedule, just like the emotions that usually produce it. But scheduling (ie, an editorial calendar) is what keeps most successful purveyors of content in business.

If 37signals posted once a week, they wouldn’t be as successful. If the New York Times doesn’t deliver fresh, relevant news, they’ll be in even deeper trouble.

If you want people to keep coming back, your content has to be both inspired and timely. This means that most content providers—just like designers and artists—have a very difficult task on their hands: Staying inspired and being creative on a deadline.

It’s hard, but it’s reality.

On The Term Content

Beyond David’s qualms with scheduling content, I’m not sure about his denunciation of the term itself. As he put it:

“Treating content as a category on its own is missing the point entirely… so no more content, please.”

I’m all for rethinking our terms, especially when those terms don’t capture the breadth and depth of what they really mean. I believe that the labels we choose have power, and can greatly cheapen or enhance the value of a thing.

But at the same time, what’s really at stake in calling what we produce ‘content’? And what else are we gonna call it? ‘Stuff’? ‘Ideas in writing, video and photo form on the web’? If we abandon the term altogether, will we be better off?

I’m curious to know what a better term might be.

The Argument Behind the Argument

Although I disagree with some of what David’s saying, I think the spirit behind his argument has value. It seems like his true beef is not with semantics and editorial calendars; it’s with cheap, awful crap that gets published in the name of a ‘strategy’. It’s disappointing.

And yet, not all content consumers long for quality and thoughtfulness. There are plenty of folks in the world who will read what we call crap, which is probably why so many publishers produce it religiously, and on a schedule.

Why So Serious?

I think the key thing to remember is, we don’t have to be slave to the term ‘content’ and whatever we assume it entails. We’re free peoples, and free to modify the term for our own use. To hate ‘content’ is to take it too seriously—most of us are trying to do our jobs, produce decent stuff and find helpful phrases and shorthand for talking about it.