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.
17 Comments
Kenny Meyers
May 26th
I can’t wait for the “I’m sick and tired of people using the word “word” to describe “words” post”. Where he determines that a perfectly good generalization/categorization doesn’t work for him, most likely because he saw his own generic rhetoric staring back at him and he did not like what he saw.
Matt Robin
May 26th
“…sick and tired of hearing about how you should be producing “content” to attract a web following.”
For David:
Y’know what, without content (the words and ‘stuff’)…what else is left? Pretty pictures? Pure decoration or art-work alone? Sure, ‘a picture can tell a thousand words’ but *knowing-laugh*…that’s not enough!
I agree: content shouldn’t just be written, abstractly, just for the sake of being there. Bad content, empty, vacant fluff is just a waste of space (literally). Written content is very necessary though for communicating value, product, services and a whole fist of other important ‘stuff’ that can’t be relayed visually alone.
For Tiff:
Keep doing what you do so well, content, regardless of what it’s called/labelled, is needed…(and good, well-written content has never been needed more on the Web!)
Which also means: yes, that ‘Content’ is still required!
Tiffani
May 26th
Kenny and Matt: Thank you! I really am curious to know what a better term than ‘content’ might be. Maybe just ‘good content’ vs ‘bad content’? Hrmmm.
Kenny Meyers
May 26th
I suggest “Steve”.
In honor of my father.
Tiffani
May 26th
Kenny: What about Veronica?
Brenna
May 26th
I heard it referred to as “substance” at the Event Apart conference this week. Ultimately the room decided that “content” is really the word of choice.
brian
May 26th
There is a difference between writing fiction and writing blog posts, but I think the advice given by Cory Doctorow holds true for both, as it does for all writing. He says you shouldn’t wait until you are inspired, that you should write on a schedule and that you will find that there is little difference between the content you write while you think you are inspired and the content you write when you think you aren’t. I have found this to be true. When I go back and read what I’ve written (fiction) I really can’t tell what was written when; during my lucid moments or in those hours when writing feels like walking through waist deep waters.
You can’t be sure which posts will be the most effective at touching an industry-wide nerve. But that can’t stop you from worrying about the content of your ideas. You’ve got to keep writing, no matter what. Maybe we could all use the ‘draft’ feature of our blogging software a little more effectively. But don’t ever stop writing. You won’t ever find your best stuff if you wait for it to show up.
Also, you are right, Tiff. The term ‘content’ has been thrown about enough that it has lost its rag doll stuffing, but it still means what it means: paragraphs of language with purpose.
People should keep doing it. That’s what blogs are for. We are all learning stuff from them day by day, bit by bit, post by post, even if we think we aren’t.
Kenny Meyers
May 26th
Tiffani: Don’t you bring my mother onto the internet!
Matt Robin
May 26th
We should call it ‘Jam’….it’s that layer that gets spread about all over the place!
Tiffani
May 26th
Brenna: Huh. ‘Substance’.
Feeney: Agree with you, appreciate your thoughtful thoughts, and am *really* excited to read your new writing. It was a pretty sweet surprise to find Constantly Admiring Clouds.
Kenny: But the name is perfect!
Matt: Done.
Rahel Anne Bailie
May 26th
Content is one conceptual level higher than the laundry list of content types that David mentioned. On YouTube, videos are “content” - remove them and you have no need to go to that site. On the Mayo Clinic site, medical articles are “content” - remove the articles, and you lose your audience. I think David missed the point, and I think you got it. Thanks for taking the time to create this [cough] content in defense of good ideas everywhere.
DAB
May 26th
I’d mostly agree with this post too, but I’d add a corollary: the only people allowed to call the output “content” are the people actually producing it, or have actual experience in producing it (and may be managing other producing it). Otherwise — when used by those not responsible for meeting the deadline, crafting the message, thinking the thoughts — “content” just becomes the equivalent of that old pejorative “verbiage.”
Ian Truscott
May 26th
I just discovered this blog - nice post - I’m with you this.
I agree with Kenny and Matt too, “words to describe words” made me laugh.
Isn’t there an analogy here around products, people make, count and sell products - but we don’t buy products, we buy a car, an anniversary gift or a something to make us feel good.
Content consumption is the experience, but good content creation, management, strategy etc etc is part of the process of providing that experience.
Enjoyed your post, thanks,
Ian
Julie
May 26th
I’m 27 days into a creativity challenge called “Story A Day”.
The mere fact of having committed to writing every day has made me…er, write every day.
Deadlines are good. Sure not everything is going to be great if you write on a schedule, but with a lot of quantity, the quality tends to improve, and you can always edit/delete the stuff that’s less than good.
But you’re right, the term ‘content’ is just shorthand for ‘stuff that goes in a blog/on a social media network/ in a book/ in an ebook/ in a training course/into your workbook’, which is, I think even David would admit, a little cumbersome.
Dorian Taylor
May 26th
Ah, nothing quite like a Hansson troll.
Problem is, nerds take him seriously. Moreover, they have a lot more pressing stuff to care about than the overarching reason why their paycheques come on time, like making the sure the anatomy of the mechanism is well-oiled (an unfortunate asymmetry).
It may perhaps be of value then to talk about content in terms people with a pure technical (or pure aesthetic) inclination can understand.
Content and form are made of the same substance: symbols (for programmers say bits, for visual designers say shapes/type/contrast/whatever). Form is more elemental than content, in that you need form before you can have content, the latter being composed of the former. It is only content, however, that has meaning. If form had meaning, it would be content. (Of course, this relationship is periodic, because the content of one scale acts as the form of another.)
Back to the hyperpragmatist programmer, though. He (usually a he at least, unfortunately) wants to make things go. He almost certainly cares more about the fact his software doesn’t crash than he does about the effect it has on the world when it is running. What he will understand, though, is when his program doesn’t say the right thing, it doesn’t work. There’s his content.
Then there’s the visual designer. She (I know, I know) wants things to be pretty. Or sexy. Or at least viscerally moving. She moans when asked to make the logo bigger. An inappropriate colour or knock-off typeface just won’t create the same impact. In here is her content.
I think the approach to take is if the content isn’t right, that is, the actual content users and customers show up to acquire, that part of the business (which could equate to the whole business) doesn’t work, or doesn’t have the same impact.
$0.02
John Goode
May 26th
Content is often a fatty goo that surrounds muscle. It disfigures the intended shape, design and idea of a web presence. It is therefore a term that has come to mean something *nasty*.
Muscle in this analogy is conversational 2-way content, it is often discussion and debate. It is engaging because it is current, meaningful and produced in response to need to converse and share.
We still need the term content. But we have to hope that it becomes analogous to responsive conversation rather than a series of top-down positioning statements and shapeless marketing goo.
Cristina
May 26th
Lol!! @mattrobin
Today I was chatting to arts advisors who see the problem that visual artists have in creating websites. We make images - but our ‘content’ is not recognised by search engines, therefore rendering us ‘invisible’.
RT ‘Pretty pictures? Pure decoration or art-work alone? Sure, ‘a picture can tell a thousand words’ but *knowing-laugh*…that’s not enough!’