So why does useful content happen so seldom?

Useful content happens quite infrequently. Most often content on websites is mundane, repetitive and generally worthless. We talk about differentiating useful and useless content here.

How does useless content happen?

This is a critical question, because some of you are going to see the light and decide to step out and be remarkable and you cannot step out and be remarkable unless you can identify what is happening now.

It is critical for leadership to understand the strategic content is just not making up stuff and then promoting it with a loud voice. Make sure you are not caught up in the concept that social media participation is free and content creation is free therefore creating content is a breeze and free.

Too often website content is relegated to anyone with a brain fart to share, or who wants to put just about anything onto the social media grill. Business owners often pass content creation onto an ad agency and the content is not even tracked for quality, or readability, or usefulness.

There are content writers out there who make a living finding content online and rewording it a bit for the next customer. This is a fruitless exercise for the business owner. It is a living for the english major and pays the bills at the agency.

You, as a thoughtful leader do not want to be here. Oh, and if you are seeing great analytics each month with this arrangement; something is wrong. What is being measured does not represent value for you.

We must understand that all content is not the same. 

Just because a Jugo and a Mercedes Benz had 98% of the same components does not make the Jugo compare favorably. The Jugo was a real bargain though when you thought about only up front costs.

Most of us understand the critical differentiators between a Jugo- are Jugos even made anymore? and the Benz; but the same can be said about content also. Useful content and useless content are made up of the same stuff, and brain fart content is easier because there is little extra work.

There are a variety of forces pushing toward mediocre content. 

1. Agencies make a living by helping with SEO and because websites require content, they are interested in content that gets the project done. Easy brain fart content rehashed from anywhere or some platitudes picked from the brain of the owner, works.

There is also a lot of  mediocre content created under the guise of being useful for Local SEO. You might see the same content belched up 6 different ways so that the material can be presented around  a particular city. This is folly for local SEO.  It  also undermines the confidence of the web visitor to see tripe printed on the page.

2. The next great source of easy content is promotional material talking about the company; tooting the company horn is usually quite pleasing to the person paying the bill and we are creating content at high speed here. So what is easier than pleasing platitudes.

Do you ever watch those videos to introduce a company? They are usually filled with generic information that no one cares about except the business owner and the person responsible for creating the video. It gets him or her home and the project finished.

3. Owners just like to make stuff up. They know what is best.  They are used to giving orders. And it is the boss' privilege to assume they know what you are talking about at any time. I recently heard a business owner deciding what they could put up on Facebook last week. He spends about an hour a month on Facebook, maybe... but felt perfectly comfortable deciding what made sense here. This is the HIPPO problem. Highest Paid Person's Opinion.

Discerning leadership must understand that, while we can develop an intuitive understanding of the type of people who hire us, and we can create useful content within this context; it is essential to be seeking feedback, interacting with site visitors and asking questions and testing.

Actual testing allows you to better understand and better serve the types of people you really want to work for. This takes effort, and planning and time and this brings us to our last point standing in the way of creating really useful content...

4. Owners like to see their people doing useful work. Useful work is getting stuff done that pays the bills now. Investing in the future is more of an intangible goal, and these types of projects are mostly thought about after work when the owner can muse and imagine great stuff. When the work day starts, there is a strong tendency to bring out the industrial brain. and with the industrial brain, anything that stands in the way of production and the daily urgent tasks, has the priority.

Oh there is a lot of lip service here, and head bobbing when we start talking about finding space for the important and not urgent, but daybreak comes and the workday begins and... uh, what were we talking about?

So who feels like I am  totally out of line here? What are your thoughts/ Am I completely off base here? Am I just being a cranky old fart? Lets here from some searchers too. Are you finding what you want to find?