What is “content”?

“Content is king!” This pronouncement has been in vogue among business and technical communicators for the past few years. But what exactly is content? Is it just the latest buzzword for yet another vaguely defined idea?

The fact is that content — though a decidedly broad term — does refer to rather specific information components. Informally, content can be considered more or less the same as subject matter, though the latter term can refer either to material that exists only in rough form or to polished material that is ready for use as a meaningful component in a finished information product. In contrast, content usually refers to material that has been carefully constructed and polished to stand as a distinct, meaningful unit. Unlike information, which often is wrongly used interchangeably with the term, raw content is not (or should not have to be) associated with a specific purpose or audience.

Raw content can consist of a paragraph or a page of text about a particular topic; it can be a diagram, a photograph, a video or a sound bite. Whatever the medium or format, though, a good piece of content should be able to stand on its own. At its best,  content is readily identifiable by its type (e.g., procedure, introduction) and format (e.g., bulleted list, schematic diagram) and should be reconfigurable for use as a component of at least one finished information product.

You should be able to pull all of the content you need into a coherent, polished piece of communication that meets the needs of a particular audience and serves a clearly defined purpose. When you’ve done that, you’ll have a successful communication product.

Mechanics Matter!

Commas Save Lives: “Let’s eat Grandpa!” vs. “Let’s eat, Grandpa!”

~ From a recent Tweet by a high-schooler! Apparently some of them are getting it right. (Reused with permission)

Bite Your Tongue!

I will use this space to post and analyze linguistic abominations from various business communication products. Feel free to add and discuss your own, but please be discreet about identifying the perpetrators.

Here’s my entry for today (2/14/10).

I received this in an e-mail from a very large corporation. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve seen this awkward placement of the adjective form of “below” in business communication:

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Good communication is primarily strategic

Effective written communication focuses on strategic elements: topic analysis, content organization, and the processes required to correlate and refine these elements through the use of technical aspects including grammar and word choice. Business writing projects that attempt to reduce this development process to a matter of tools and technicalities usually have an over-priced, ineffective outcome.