Content is king. At least that seems to be the prevalent opinion in the world of marketing these days. As a content manager working on websites across the country, I’m torn by the need to let clicks drive the story, not the story itself. Sure, there are instances where the most clickable words or phrases for a particular industry just naturally flow into the storyline. But what happens when the fixation on Adword ranking actually hurts?
As part of my current role, I’m “fixing” older content to make it more relevant. I’ve been coming across some really bad content written to appease the older metrics gods where there is so much repetition and obvious cramming of particular key words that it’s almost painful to read.
Is the ad writer or copy writer that I trained to be pre-Internet now obsolete in today’s clickable world? Sure, this old dog can learn a few more tricks. Still, I prefer presenting a story for the brand when writing a website. I want to engage the reader, not the auto bots that are trolling the site. However, in this world that we now live in, there has to be balance.
I’m not going to fight to stay in the old way of doing things. I recognize that I can take advantage of online training to become the best at writing content that is highly relevant and clickable. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon creating something relatable just to make it to page one.
When I step back and assess my current situation, I guess there is more emphasis right now on the word “manager” than “content.” But thankfully there are opportunities like this blog to be more…creative.