001 Two Challenges All Digital Content Must Conquer

The Transcript

Two Challenges All Digital Content Must Conquer

Demian Farnworth: Hi, welcome to Rough Draft, the daily podcast that delivers the essential writing advice you need to succeed online as a writer. I’m your host, Demian Farnworth, Chief Content Writer for Copyblogger Media. And thank you for sharing the next four minutes of your life with me.

A Very Brief History of the Birth of the Web

Let’s start with a simple history lesson on this inaugural episode of Rough Draft. Taking you back — I don’t know — two decades to the early 1990s. There was a host of developers. Scientists. Programmers. Men and a few women joking about servers. Sharing. Communicating across universities, governments, and defense agencies.

The Goofy Way to Get to Emote

And then this thing happened. They connected all of these networks together. It was like a chain letter. You could search. People celebrated this development. And it would not be an understatement to say it has changed our lives. The way we communicate, shop, research, emote.

Yeah, emote. Some people say it brings out the worst in people. I can’t argue with that. But it seems wonderful the way we have information — at our fingertips.

Why Knowing Everything About the Sex Pheromone of Boar Saliva Maybe Isn’t That Great

That information, though, is large. It’s gargantuan. It is beyond comprehension. But if I want to know what the sex pheromone of boar saliva has to do with truffles (mushroom variety).

Now this gets at the crux of the web. Because of the amount of content. But who is creating all this content.

The Two Challenges All Web Content Faces

All content on the web suffers from two main challenges: obscurity and neglect.

When I say obscurity, I mean web content is buried beneath billions of web pages. By neglect, I mean if someone actually finds your page, they’ll more than likely ignore it or abandon it.

The web also opens up opportunities for you to build a website, publish a blog. You now have become a voice. But you are still a voice in a dark, dark sea. If you want to have fun, make a living on the web, you have to get found. And when people find you, they have to care about you.

The Strange Reason You Should Be Actually Encouraged

Here’s something you can be encouraged by: “the fact that anyone reads anything at all online is a demonstration of an extraordinary hunger for content.” Erin Kissane, author of The Elements of Content strategy.

That should encourage you that there are people out there who want information. Who are looking for entertainment. Would like to be educated. And you could quite possibly be the person who does that. The question is, are you going to be found? And when they find you, will they actually care to read what you have? And that’s the point of Rough Draft.

This podcast will teach you the tips, the strategies and the tactics that you need to know in order to not only survive online but actually thrive, be found and become noticed in a world full of noise.

I’ll see you in the next episode of Rough Draft.

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