A business is not a content factory. It’s not a content farm. It’s not even a content mill. In fact, it shouldn’t be any of those things. A business is a business. It may or may not publish content about and for that business.
Some pundits, though, will argue that businesses should be content factories. They will say that businesses need to find a publishing rhythm. They will state business owners or people in the marketing department need to create processes that allow content to be created more easily. Such points are fair ones; however, it’s wrong to think of any of those things as being related to a “factory.”
The purpose of a factory is to produce the same good or goods over and over again. It’s a repetitive cycle from the production of the product to the quality control of that product. Everything that arrives at the end of the conveyor belt is to look exactly like the thing that precedes and follows it. Abnormalities are to be tossed into the rubbish bin. A continued state of abnormalities is to be addressed by fine-tuning the machine that sets the production process in motion. Such a state isn’t meant to produce questions; no, any questions about the process and the end product are snuffed out in the interest of the cookie cutter. It’s a process that may work well when ensuring the “S” is placed correctly on Skittles candy, but it isn’t necessarily one when it comes to producing content.
Content, written according to the laws that govern the factory, is in danger of attaining the quality of sameness. Everything has to be written according to a certain rule. Creativity is squashed. The goal is not to entertain customers or to inform them; the goal is to create a deluge of content. This is a world where quantity, not quality, trumps all. It’s a place where it’s better to get five blog posts out the door and into the world of the wild web rather than one, solid piece.
It isn’t that editorial calendars aren’t needed. It isn’t that rhythms don’t need to be found. It isn’t even that all the rules should be thrown out the window. It’s simply that the idea of a “content factory” has the potential to ruin and to try to commoditize what is at the heart of good content: content that seeks to inspire, inform, and entertain.
Image: Lindsey Bieda (CC BY SA 2.0)
Well said. I am the senior communications person for my organization and a blogger, so I fully appreciate the appeal of producing content, but it cannot get in the way of business. When content is king above all else you can destroy the very thing that generated the content in the first place, the business. Moderation is good in just about everything.
yearwood It’s a matter of keeping priorities straight, isn’t it? It’s tempting to create content for “buzz” – which seems ever harder to generate these days – but to what end?