The Value Exchange: Caring About Content

If good content, the web or otherwise, is not of interest to you, you should probably stop reading this post and go find something else to do. If you’re really bored, you could take a 5 minute survey about credibility online for a survey we’re conducting (if that’s more your cup of tea).

If, on the other hand, you are interested in the quality of content both online and off, then this post may just be the thing for you.

A couple weeks ago I was at a Tweetup in Cambridge, where a fellow attendee asked me the question “Why does your generation (Gen-Y) use social media?” The question was so simple, and yet it made me realize that only rarely do we stop to think in such big picture terms.

My response, eventually, was that the Internet in general is all based on one overriding principle: the exchange of value.

E-commerce allows merchants to reach a wider range of customers, while providing customers access to a broader, more diverse range of products. Authors and academics can be published broadly, but lose in return some degree of control over their material.

In social media, we exchange the value of our consumer information for the value of free social networking services. That value lies in access and engagement with both those close to us and those far away, either by geography or other, socially imposed distances.

You can keep up with your friends near and far (geographically) but you can also engage with people you don’t know, and who you may never otherwise have had the chance to meet and engage with. For instance, I can tweet at one of my favorite authors, and if he’s active on twitter he may respond and we can have a back and forth conversation.

…the Internet in general is all based on one overriding principle: the exchange of value.

Content works in much the same way. 

Nothing comes free–the social networking capability came at the expense of your user data, “free” apps are filled with ads to serve the interests of the app creator.  Much in the same way, content marketing functions off of a similar principle, wherein the publisher creates and gives away content for free, with the idea that by giving away useful content, users will in turn consider the publisher useful and invest further with them, whether that means through purchasing or simply engaging more. In other words, the creator or sharer is always asking the question “What can you do for me?”

Therein, however, lies the most important and most curious aspect of the Internet. It is no longer a world of publisher and audience. Each participant in the content marketplace is both a creator and consumer as a result of the revolution in communications technologies.

It’s a system of forced reciprocity. Reciprocate the value or die; plain and simple, in the world of the Internet you pay to play.

For a long time now I’ve stressed answering two questions whenever you write something for the web: “So what?” and “What now?”

Whenever you write, you need to ask yourself, so what? Why is anyone reading these words I’m writing? What is the purpose?

Once you’ve answered that, you need to answer “What now?” What will the reader/consumer take away and what can they do with what you’ve given them?

Now I’m going to add another question that needs to be answered even before that. “What can I give the reader?” If you have nothing to give, you can’t expect to get anything from the exercise of creating content, certainly not from your readers. If you have nothing to give them, they won’t bother consuming your content, so really, you won’t actually have readers.

So what am I giving you, dear reader? I’m giving you a list of things to do once you’ve already answered those three all-important questions that will make your content even more valuable to your readers.

Be Human

Simplify your message and your language, and please, keep it light. Sometimes this means cracking a joke, other times it just means keeping a conversational tone. Unless you’re writing a formal document, stay casual. The web is social, and you wouldn’t speak in jargon to your friends.

Break it up

Short posts, short paragraphs, short sentences. Everything needs to come in bite sized nuggets of awesome.

Share

Remember that reciprocity thing? Make sure it is the easiest thing on earth for your audience to share and interact with you. Don’t make me look for the “Tweet this” button. Don’t make me have to Google you to find your Twitter handle when I’m already on your website. I want to interact with you, but I shouldn’t have to work for it.

Now this post is getting awfully long, and I know we all have the attention span of a goldfish. Feel free to share what annoys you about poor content on the web below.