Content in Context

Jessica Hagy, "Information Overload and/or Closet Organizers." Indexed © 2009. All rights reserved.

What’s So Important About Content?

Everything changes. Online, things change more rapidly than elsewhere.

Just a few years ago, a company could afford to think of its web presence as one marketing channel among many. But not any more.

Large enterprise, small business, or non-profit organization. Direct-to-consumer or B2B. Media, retail, finance, healthcare, government, hospitality, telecommunications. Businesses in every sector are increasingly aware of the need for an immediate shift in how they communicate with customers.

Why Now?

Because everything changes. More specifically, innovations in web technology and design create changes in consumer demand—and vice versa. People now use the web on a daily basis for work, entertainment, communication, and convenience. They expect to find their favorite print media online and to get corporate and product information that’s fresh, accurate, and fast.

They are increasingly impatient with disinformation, marketing language, and poor customer service. And they make their opinions known.

For a company to thrive beyond the next few years, it must recognize the importance of how it communicates with its customers. And that takes forethought, strategic planning, expertise, and dedicated budget.

Why Content Strategy?

Because everything changes. Businesses do, certainly, as do the products they offer.

And therefore website content—the words, images, audio, video, downloads, and especially the data that users never see—must change over time. Online, customers can go anywhere they please. They will abandon a website with stale, inaccurate, boring, confusing, inaccessible, or otherwise sub-par content.

If the content of any website isn’t:

•    selected and crafted for the site’s specific audience
•    clean and well organized
•    thoughtfully integrated with the interaction and visual design
•    properly formatted for current and future tech requirements; and especially
•    regularly and systematically updated

then the results will be apparent—and frustrating—to the customer.

Content Strategists are professionals who specialize in the practice or discipline that ensures high-quality interactive content. But anyone who attends to your content from a strategic perspective is engaging in content strategy.

Value their work. It’s vital.