When we recently made the switch to our new focus, and new website, both guides were lost. They didn’t really have a home in the new structure, and they were kind of distractions. But while they were out of sight (and site), they weren’t out of mind. We’ve used the material regularly, and often thought about republishing the content online.

Well, we finally have. Today we’re quietly announcing that we’ve published the appropriately named Create Web Content as a reference site for anyone who wants to plan, produce and manage content for their website. The site is a huge (easily over 10,000-word) resource on how to create web content, covering such topics as:

• Set objectives so you don’t waste time creating content that doesn’t help you attain your goals
• Find a niche to avoid getting lost in the ocean of online information
• Research your target market to create content that targets their wants, needs and frustrations
• Research keywords to create search-optimized content your audience finds
• Choose a domain name that’s both memorable and search engine friendly
• Review competition to imitate their strengths and exceed their weaknesses
• Find partners to help with content development and promotion
• Design an information architecture that organizes content effectively
• Choose media that’s appropriate for your objectives and market—be it text or video
• Guide style with consistent rules that raise your content’s professionalism
• Plan content so you’re not scrambling at the last minute to produce it
• Process content in an effective step-by-step manner that maximizes resources
• Manage documents efficiently, so you’re not searching for lost files
• Source content to augment original material with existing works
• Convert content from non-web formats to be digitally friendly
• Research your niche to gather information required for content production
• Outline content to provide a framework for writing material
• Write content that both people and search engines love
• Measure content to determine its effectiveness and inform optimization

A lightly ad-supported site, this is hopefully the first in a series that we launch on subjects of interest. The next in line will cover writing for websites, and include material that we’ve created over the past three years on how to write effectively for the web. We hope you enjoy the sites, and look forward to your feedback (which you can feel free to add below).

As a recent episode of the excellent Age of Persuasion describes, the unwritten contract between advertisers and consumers has long been this: advertisers support valuable content with sales messages, and in exchange consumers let those messages—commercials—into their eyes, ears, hearts and minds.

This contract was largely created by Albert Lasker, who some consider the father of advertising. Lasker creatively determined that advertising could support the creation of original programming. He’s credited with inventing soap operas.

Today, Lasker’s contract seems quaint. Advertisers and consumers are in a battle for attention. But "content marketing," a new approach that builds off established principles, promises to renew the contract while both improving consumers’ lives and advertisers’ sales.

Online, valuable content is your strongest collateral

By the end of the 20th century, Lasker’s contract had unravelled.

Advertisers pummeled consumers with ad formats that provided nothing in return, like posters over urinals and automated telemarketing calls. Meanwhile, consumers responded with tools like TiVo that let them consume original content while ignoring sales pitches. It was all-out memetic warfare: the more consumers ditched and filtered traditional media, the more advertisers looked to interrupt their everyday life in ways that were harder to screen.

In the midst of this war, a new battlefield emerged: the internet. Advertisers’ early reaction to the internet was massive interruption warfare. And so they filled websites with annoying banners and popup ads. This proved to be a bad idea, because the internet (a) was traditionally uncommercial and (b) put more control than ever into the hands of consumers. Hence popup- and banner-blocking software proliferated, and the battle shifted decidedly in favor of consumers.

Which brings us to today.

Most traditional advertisers still haven’t figured out the internet. And so they continue to throw huge budgets at "building their brand" online and experimenting with the latest fads, from viral marketing to social media.

Yet in the trenches, a few smart marketers have been making money online from day one.

Why? Because they realized a truth that’s only now percolating out: on the internet, your most important marketing collateral is valuable content.

Consumers don’t want to be sold, they want to be helped

The old contract stated that consumers would accept advertising that supported valuable content. But with consumers having more control than ever over what they consume, that contract’s no longer valid.

The new contract states that if marketers provide consumers with valuable branded content that addresses a pain or provides pleasure, they’ll consume it and use their now finely honed media savvy to filter out the hype.

While this model has been around for awhile (known by such terms as "custom content," "custom publishing," "branded content" and "branded entertainment"), the key difference online is transparency. 

Whereas companies might have previously hidden behind a thin veneer of editorial credibility (with magazines like "Harry" for clothier Harry Rosen), today they must remove that veneer in order to get closer to customers with content like relationship-building blog posts.

In short, advertisers used to support publications and broadcast shows in order to benefit from their credibility and relationship with consumers. If consumers liked Johnny Carson, for example, perhaps they’d also like the orange juice advertised between segments of the show. Similarly with ads in magazines and newspapers: advertisers hope to gain credibility by association.

Not so much anymore.

Today, consumers can and want to go directly to the source. They like and trust journalists only slightly more than advertisers (and that’s debatable), see stars constantly undermined by scandal, and go straight to blogs for news and YouTube for entertainment.

Similarly, they want to go straight to a brand for help with a particular problem. But they don’t want to be sold. Rather, they want to be helped with informative content, and want to develop a long-term, trusting relationship with the people providing the products and services they consume.

To renew the contract, marketers must think like publishers and broadcasters, and strive to provide the value and credibility for which they used to turn to publications and shows. They need to deliver valuable content transparently, establish a one-to-one, permission-based relationship with consumers, and stop assaulting them with unwelcome interruptions.

This is the promise of content marketing. Advertisers ignore it at their peril.

Maybe it’s the time, with a deadline looming, you stared at a blank page for hours—rewriting the same sentence over and over while the clock ticked loudly in your silent, deserted office.

Or maybe it’s the time you rigorously edited a document for an important meeting—only to discover that version was two revisions out of date.

You might have even faced one of the most frightful experiences of all: finding a serious typo in a published website or an expensive batch of printed documents—or worse, finding a glaring factual error.

And the survey says …

These are the type of stories we heard over the past week while conducting a survey on content-related frustrations and desires.

I wanted to share our findings to show how universal the pain can be—and to encourage more feedback from people who know the challenges.

See how well this list reflects your frustrations and desires, then add your own in the comments below:

• It just takes too much of my time: Saving time is a common desire. One person we spoke with had a complete book from which to source content, yet still felt frustrated with the amount of time it took to convert this material into website content.
• Simple grammatical errors and typos should never happen: Despite the pervasiveness of spell check, several people identified poor quality control as a key frustration. Many related this back to time; they find it frustrating to have to scrutinize materials that content providers deliver. "That’s what we’re paying them for," we heard from one respondent. One respondent identified "consistently perfect content" as a desire. Now that’s setting the bar high.
• How can they not understand the audience and subject matter? We heard several complaints and concerns about content producers who either didn’t have the requisite expertise to write on a subject, or didn’t take the time to get a proper briefing.  One respondent, who works in interactive marketing, expressed his desire succinctly: he wants "subject matter experts who can write for the web." More specifically, respondents want content providers to be sure about such variables as voice, tone, reading level, target audience, regulatory constraints and referencing requirements and style. In short: they want content providers to do their homework.
• Too many words! Several respondents also complained about excessive wordiness. (A problem commonly associated with jargon.) They want content that’s short, to the point and accessible. We heard desires like "friendly, professional content," "accurate and appropriate," and  "simple, clear content." That’s, um, pretty simple and clear.
• Oh no, not another revision: Ah yes, the neverending revision cycle. Revisions and version control made many respondents’ lists of frustrations. (We can really relate, which is why we’ve instituted collaborative document sharing and version control processes that ease revision cycles and eliminate version conflicts. I hope to write about them soon.) One respondent, discussing pharmaceutical marketing, summed up her frustration: "the client says the copy is done, but it isn’t. It’s never final."
• I just want to trust somebody: Besides time, another underlying theme is trust. Respondents want "content experts on hand when needed." People they can work with to plan, scope and deliver.
• Going from nothing to something great: Ultimately, content is creative. And many people find the thought of creating content from scratch daunting. Several respondents identified with the fear of a blank page, and the pressure to turn it into purposeful communication. The pressure rises when you hear some of our respondents’ desires. One account manager’s goal?  "Copy that will WOW the client."

Express yourself

Agree or disagree?

Have something to add?

Don’t let others speak for you!

We want to know your thoughts on content.

Be it horror story or happy ending, add a comment below and tell us your biggest frustrations and desires.

"The ink-based writing implement has been shown to be more efficacious than the blade-centered cutting device."

But only when the blade-centered cutting device is sharp enough to trim the fat.

And so, to mark the launch of our new "say it smarter" positioning, we invite you to translate your own famous quotes into jargon.

Say it stupider

The quote above came courtesy of our own fastidious jargon hunter, Jebadiah.

Here are some more examples:

• "And the omnipotent deity vocalized, ‘Facilitate effective illumination.’"
• "To embody the property of existence or not to embody the property of existence, that is the query posed."
• "What quantity of roads should an adult male endeavour to traverse before said male might accurately refer to himself as having achieved adulthood status?"
• "Levitate precariously in the manner of a butterfly, administer unpleasant sensations in the manner of a bee."
• "I enjoy possession of nighttime visualizations."
• "The sole variable we have cause to express alarm at is the expression of alarm itself."
• "Things of an actionable nature vocalize more noticeably than things of a verbal nature."
• "Frankly, my dear, I’m unequivocally indifferent towards the outcome of this situation. "

Unleash your inner corporation

Have you been SuperPoked lately? Or maybe you’ve been thrown a hot potato by one of your 32 BFFs. (That’s “best friend for life,” for those who aren’t hip to Facebook-widget parlance.) Then again, you might be too busy watching videos of people stacking stuff on sleeping cats while you pick out your most ironic T-shirt for your MySpace profile pic.

Considering the amount of media attention that sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube receive, you’d suspect that’s all people do on the web these days. But according the Online Publishers Association, people still spend the vast majority of their time online visiting content-based sites.

The rise of social media represents an interesting paradox for online content providers. As someone who loves the web and revels in its evolution, I’m excited to see it coming into its own as a community-based conduit for collaboration and sharing. But as someone who obsesses over content and—let’s face it—makes a living by studying, producing and polishing it, I sometimes raise an eyebrow at the apparent prevalence of user-generated material.

Numbers never lie

Well, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief: the OPA’s most recent Internet Activity Index, which analyzes Nielsen Online data each month, showed that people spend a scant 7.5 percent of their time online visiting community sites, while they spend a whopping 42.7 percent on content-based sites.

Here’s how it breaks down. The IAI divides sites among five categories:

• Content (news, information and entertainment sites)
• Commerce (sites like Amazon and eBay)
• Communication (sites that facilitate the exchange of information, such as Yahoo! Mail and MSN Groups)
• Community (user-generated sites like Facebook and YouTube)
• Search (sites that provide results based on a user’s request, such as Google Search)

With all the hoopla surrounding social networking, you might expect that community sites, which rely on user-generated content, would account for the biggest piece of the pie. So why is their share so small? According to the OPA, community sites reach a profound number of people, but their reach spans a narrower category—59.5 percent, to be exact. In other words, unless you’re under 18, you probably aren’t spending much time on MySpace. Content sites, on the other hand, reach 92.7 percent of surfers because they’ve got something for everyone.

Blurring boundaries

But here’s where things get tricky. Content-based sites are realizing that their readers want to have a say, which is why you can post comments about breaking news on CNN.com and read blogs on The New York Times online. This means that the freshly drawn lines between content and community are already blurring. But in such cases, it’s still the content that fosters the conversation. And that’s exactly what it should be doing.

The benefits of user-generated content are clear. Not only is it free to produce, but it taps in to our evolutionary drives to be creative and to think and speak for ourselves. These are all good things. Very good things. But when people are actually looking for information rather than an outlet for their opinions, it seems there will always be a demand for expertise.

you acquired the recorded image?

Excellent.

Now show us your skills by posting your own convoluted quotations as comments below.