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!’

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.

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

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.

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