In the next few years I predict a glut of University Advancement jobs going to new-media types who are masters of their tools and not much else. With the prevalence of content management, web-templates, and social media tools, the recurring weakness of most any web project is content creation.
Writers. Communicators. Storytellers.
Without these people, the designers, the developers, the usability experts, and the webmaster server types are useless. In the absence of substance, our tools mean nothing. It’s packaging without product; A concert without music.
So don’t hire a web designer. Don’t hire a “Social Media Expert”. First and foremost, hire a communicator who also happens to specialize in one of those areas. Your decision will pay dividends.
(saw that great little cartoon in IABC’s latest CW magazine) It struck a nerve.
It sings to the same tune as “The Discipline of Content Strategy” from A List Apart:
until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful investment, we’ll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests. We’ll keep trying to fit words, audio, graphics, and video into page templates that weren’t truly designed with our business’s real-world content requirements in mind. Our customers still won’t find what they’re looking for. And we’ll keep failing to publish useful, usable content that people actually care about. Stop pretending content is somebody else’s problem. Take up the torch for content strategy. Learn it. Practice it. Promote it. It’s time to make content matter.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
This is exactly why I worry about our implementation of an enterprise WCMS being a failure. We are turning over 99% of our web presence to people with no real communication or writing experience (much less WEB writing experience).
Actually, it’s already been turned over to them, but now they will have a tool that’s so easy to use that they may actually start trying to update their site’s content.
Scary thought.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:17 pm
this is the most profound thing i’ve read all day. this is true in every walk of life (dreamworks might make more eye-catching movies but pixar wins hands down because they can tell a helluva story).
You can only sell the sizzle for so long till ravenous people wanting and not finding the steak start to lather you up with bbq sauce!
July 1st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
sizzle without steak. Adding that to my collection of analogies.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:41 am
Amen!
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
I hope you’re right. Good writers are hard to find these days.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Good evening Nephew. Consider our quandry here as part a US Army email system that allows only text. No graphics, no pretty fonts and no fancy signatures pass through our Exchange Servers. Everything pretty must be part of a .doc, .pdf, or .ppt. It is all about the words, imagine that.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Great article, this message needs to be spread.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Amen! The dirty little secret I.T. must acknowledge, “The CMS can’t write.”
July 21st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
The sizzle vs. steak analogy is an old one in the print world from whence I came. Newspaper editors back in the day were always lambasted for having too much steak and no sizzle.
Things started to go sour when we started to call everything “content.” That sounds so sterile, so bland, that soon everyone figured that anyone could make “content” just like soup.
I agree that higher ed could use an infusion of old-school journalists, who don’t create “content.” They write headlines that make you look at the lead, and then leads that make you want to keep reading. (Editors call these “good yarns.”) They take pictures (yes and video!) with human interest. Etc.
That’s what I would call a true “content strategy.”
July 21st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I’m in the middle of converting our site to CMS and I’ve been stressing this point with the site owners for months now, and they still ignore the writing aspect. (Agreed, it’s not as much fun as choosing photos and making videos, but it’s critical!)
My motto is you supply the content and I’ll make it pretty for the web - and that’s where the grand project idea stalls 9 times out of 10. Great piece, CWG!