Comments on: I have Nothing to Say.

By: nniiccoollee

nniiccoollee — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:57:05 +0000

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!

By: Leslie

Leslie — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:39:49 +0000

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.”

By: Luke Robinson

Luke Robinson — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:18:01 +0000

Amen! The dirty little secret I.T. must acknowledge, “The CMS can’t write.”

By: aaron

aaron — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:13:25 +0000

Great article, this message needs to be spread.

By: Bob Stephens

Bob Stephens — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:39:30 +0000

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.

By: Andrew Careaga

Andrew Careaga — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:48:30 +0000

I hope you’re right. Good writers are hard to find these days.

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:41:36 +0000

Amen!

By: Drew

Drew — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:27:34 +0000

sizzle without steak. Adding that to my collection of analogies.

By: Isaacson

Isaacson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:17:04 +0000

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!

By: Tony Dunn

Tony Dunn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:07:37 +0000

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.