One of the things that I have noticed as of late is that a lot of the literature out there talks about the importance of good content in terms of fulfilling objectives for your target audiences. I would like to build on that.
When I think of content, I like to think of it as an organizational output. Mary may spend 30 hours producing a report on her particular knowledge domain, but at the end of that, what we as audience members interact with, is the final product, the output. We may not even know that it took 30 hours to produce, and in fact, that part of it may well be irrelevant. What we care about as the audience for that report, is the value that the information within it provides, and how it helps us to fulfill our own objectives. In this sense, content is an enabler.
What comes out of all of this, is the realization that content is really the expression of value by an individual and/or an organization to their clients, stakeholders and audiences. In the same way that we may use other people’s content to support a hypothesis of our own, others will be doing the same with our content. We like good content with high value because it supports and enables us to produce our own good content with high value.
As a sometimes webmaster, I remind myself of that fact whenever I get a content publish request from a subject matter expert or content OPI (Office of Primary Interest). By enabling their request to update their content, I am enabling them to provide better/more valuable content, and in doing so, enabling their professional and personal objectives of being a valuable employee… Which in turn enables me to further my own brand as an enabler.
The moral of the story? We all want to produce something of value. So let’s enable each other to enable each other.
