Making Your Writing Work Harder for You
Here, have some highlights:
Highlights
People are extraordinarily sensitive to framing. “Art” is valuable. “Content” is not.
“Content” suggests that something is mass-produced in a factory-like setting, which is unfortunate, because the type of people you’re trying to sell to probably don’t think that “mass-produced in a factory” describes anything that they want to buy. A quick anthropological thought experiment: if you’re selling enterprise software, do you think the decisionmaker considers themselves the kind of person who eats Kraft singles or the kind of person who appreciates artisanal cheeses? You should probably meet them where they are, rather than producing the written equivalent of pink slime, like TechCrunch or ValleyWag.
The industry uses the word “content” primarily because it is form-factor agnostic, but that is again unfortunate, because people have really strong opinions about form-factors. They even have very strong opinions about the names of form-factors. For example, articles and essays suggest erudite writing created by experts… and then there are blog posts.
Blog posts are quickly-depreciating commoditized drek. Everything about the design and packaging of them says Do Not Take Me Seriously. The format encourages function — real-time short-form reporting and snap analysis — which in turn makes short-form reporting and snap analysis into people’s default grading scheme for all blog posts.
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