A Question of Creative Content Ethics

I am, working for an agency and also some freelance. Both instances have me editing copy or creating new work that really shines for the client, because these places actually GET IT, which many agencies still don’t sadly. And “Messica” hah! poor girl!

Hey Jess (can I call you Jess or do you hate that? Haha.) Great piece! I think about this sort of stuff all the time. One of the ad agencies I worked at for years put me in charge of developing content for several blogs from the ground up. I wrote well researched and content heavy feature pieces at first, and the sites quickly shot up the ranks and brought in a good amount of organic traffic month over month…

One day, with the rise of social and everyone wanting a quick referral link or two via titter or an external site (ie: my blogs) they became full of half-assed (pardon my French!) thrown together content with a lot of very obvious anchor-text-key-phrase-links in each post. The site traffic quickly dropped, and only got worse as Google updates came about. It was sad to see these blogs, which were my little pet projects, get taken down because (sadly) it is all about quantity over quality for most.

I guess the point to my sad tale is this: Yes, time is money, but you can’t b.s. the social media audience anymore. Thought-provoking and original content is worth it for the long run, even if it takes the writer a bit longer to produce. Keep up the good work!

Hi, Reilly! I can only imagine what that’s like! Sounds like you broke free. ;) Budget certainly is a factor because time is money (ugh, did I just say that?). I hope as the demand for great content and great writers goes up, there will be a shift in the perception of what it takes to create good content for businesses.

Thanks for your comment!

-Jessica

Hey Rank Watch, I appreciate the kind words and it makes me all warm and fuzzy when my writing starts a discussion like this. I do agree with you, readers are smart and we should respect that. At the same time, there will always be the “sheep” (sorry, it’s true!) who just share content without really assigning value to it.

-Jessica

Great article, Jessica! As a former copy writer for a large home building company, I know what those monkeys from the simpsons clip feel like. It’s a delicate balance, but if one’s budget can afford it, then creating a piece of unique, well-developed content is always the best route, in my opinion.

“content producer, not the brand, is responsible for great content” – you just pinned it down clearly here. Also, when the content is great, the brand will anyway rise up and gain points!

Moreover, the excerpts that you have collected from different Authors, adds to the essence of your post, and definitely widens the thinking horizon for creating even better blogs. T

Experimenting and Variety, both are good. With the competition getting tighter day by day, in SEO, Web Content, Blog posting, even readers demand more. Readers are getting intelligent enough to realize the authenticity of the pieces they they come across; Variety, Diversified writing patterns and styles is the rising need. Your post speaks of your talent of writing creatively and vast experience.

Good luck!

Jonathon! I loved your ideas in that post. Thanks for putting them out there.

And isn’t that the goal? Creating content that truly resonates — that makes people want to thank you for adding value to the conversation?

“Authentic quality doesn’t scale particularly well.” — Truth.

And while I do agree with your points with improving your craft, I still feel like there is a “good enough” plague that occurs as a direct result of content being a business (the whole quantity versus quality thing).

This is potentially remedied when you have in-house writers who really understand the subject matter and when you have agencies who truly value research.

But I guess the culprit is always volume.

So how do we fix that?

Thanks for the mention, Jessica. I just gotta love being juxtaposed with Seth Godin like that. :)

I think Seth’s on to something about the natural balance between quality and efficiency. The hard truth is that authentic quality doesn’t scale particularly well. The even harder truth is that even where we find someone who can break that rule (Seth Godin, for example), our response probably shouldn’t be to say something like, “Hey, I can do everything Seth’s doing and… PROFIT$!”

But it’s pretty hard to resolve to create the highest-possible quality content every time you hit “publish”, too.

Here’s what I think: don’t commit to being perfect. Instead, commit to your own personal build-measure-learn cycle. Keep on seeing what works and iterating once you get results. You’ll never hit perfection… mostly because it doesn’t exist. And waiting to be perfect keeps your content from getting in the hands and the minds of the people who need it most.

So just commit to constantly improving your craft. You’l feel good about your constantly improving work and your readers will reward you for your increased effort.