Well. Thunderclaps in the brain certainly wait until one is on the threshold of sleep to strike.
My thinkfest on branding continues, and has ballooned outward to encompass so much more. This isn’t (just) about a brand. This isn’t pure self-promotion. It’s turned into a giant gulping fiesta of Potential On The Internet.
One of the words that has come up in every list of “What I would write about” is content. What a ridiculous and unspecific word. Content, however, took on a new sparkling life after I attended MinneWebCon and heard Kristina Halvorson speak about content strategy. Yes, strategic content! I say “content strategy” at work and I watch eyes glaze over, so I have to shovel the pure galvanized excitement out of my head and straight into their imaginations.
Crap content and you’re nothing. It’s not just true on the web. It’s been true throughout time, and we’re at a point in time where more content is being generated and consumed than ever before.
I just ran to my bookshelf and pulled down Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind,” which jolted my fuzzy brain back onto the road of clarity in 2007 and has stuck with me. Pink defines six “senses” on which “professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend”:
- Design (not just function)
- Story (not just argument)
- Symphony (not just focus)
- Empathy (not just logic)
- Play (not just seriousness)
- Meaning (not just accumulation)
I have these six “senses” tacked up at my workspace. These points, to me, are the soul of content, of what content can be and how we use it and make it good.
Does all content need these things? Do content need all these things? I think they can act as sliding scales: some content demands more story (journalism is a clear example, or it would fall apart), some demands more play and design (the IKEA instructions for bookshelves, with the little man and his idea lightbulb).
Content through the lens of the six senses can be astonishing. It’s the root of good movie plots, of books that keep you up to get surprised by 2am. It’s the discussions that makes time at once stand still and fly by. It moves you to spur on the six senses in yourself, to get up and write a blog post and concoct amazing plans.
O-content! Honorable content! You will be uncontained and destuffed!
