Writers are swaddled by their own education and ego, wrapped in the grave linens of essay form, report form, and paragraphs with topic sentences and great transitions. That’s not how today’s audience reads content. “Back in the day, it was all about the printing press, the play, the novel—things that could be delivered by the quarto,” continues Scott Abel.
De-mystifying content development as commodity
And then there came the PC—badly named, because it made writers feel it was “theirs,” a true, “personal computer.” Even worse, Scott goes on, the PC soon sported a “My Documents” folder. “Writers take that nomenclature much too seriously,” he says with a smile.
Writers then started to hoard content developed digitally, while still delivering static long-form work:
- The white paper
- The article
- The essay
- The page
Create content that connects to audiences
Is the page user friendly? Scott dares to ask. Top writers in 2010 go off-page into the wilds of what content consumers want. “Let’s say you go to the doctor,” he says. “You like your doctor—she’s a great person, and you keep bringing her your troubles. But time after time, your condition just doesn’t improve. What do you do?” Scott pauses. “You STOP going to that doctor.”
He relates that today’s professional writer is no different. Businesses and companies turn to the writer, and ask to be healed of their lack of connection with audiences. And writers think because they went to school, love language, know their grammar and swing around a stellar vocabulary, that they have the answer. They don’t develop content; they churn out pages, papers and pap that have been done for decades, just like they learned in school.
[intlink id=”1620″ type=”page”]>>Next: Turn the lens outward . . .[/intlink]
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