Text + Media

= Content

On a near day to day basis I will have the same conversation about content. The conversation will be along the lines of me asking a client if they would like us to create content or if they are going to do it themselves. The response will usually either be that they have written all the text, or they want the DigiGround copywriters to write the text. This is where the explanation and conversation begins.

Let me just clarify, content is not just text. Think of any advertising campaign you have ever seen. There will usually be some pictures, or video, and also some text. It could be a tagline or a slogan, or even a paragraph. Then think of any website you have ever visited. Websites are filled with imagery, moving parts, buttons, icons, links, calls to action and also text.

Content is a large animal that can take a long time to generate. Or it can be quickly built. It can require a lot of writing, or it can be very quick. It all depends on the type of website you are building.

On my first successful website we built a website dedicated to the video game DC Universe Online. The website was filled with explanations and guides and information on how to play the game and be successful at it. The first version was simply long blocks of text detailing step-by-step guides on how to pass each mission. There were no pictures, no video, nothing but text. You would think it would be boring right? Well, at its peak, we were getting 100,000 unique visitors per month reading the webpage. There were some very successful pages which were duplicated onto the official forums and stuck there for the world to see every time they logged on (I believe due to inactivity they have been removed).

The intention of this website was simply to share information about the game, with detailed instructions on everything that could be done in the game to achieve success. The text content was duplicated and distributed all over the internet. It took us literally 10s of thousands of man hours to put together all this content. The site was a monster of a website with over 200 individual pages some with up to 10,000 words on the page.

Then there was another page I built. A comic book site which was an original comic series written by a friend of mine. He would artboard a story each week and I would put it together in MS Paint (it was one of the things about the concept, cheaper and more basic was best). The only text on this page was the title of each storyline each week. There was almost no effort put into it with some issues being called simply “Issue 41”. The text based content was meaningless in the scheme of things and people were only visiting to view the pictures. At its peak this comic book website was generating about 20,000 visitors per week following the adventures of the main character.

Two very contrasting websites, both with a large visitor base both with a large investment in time required for content, both with very different types of content.

So, back to the original question, will you be creating your own content or would you like us to create all the content?

Because really, the first step you need to think of, before even being asked the question is what type of content do you actually need? Once you have the answer, do you have the resources to generate the content? And then finally, who will make the content.

DigiGround can help you generate all the types you will need. Contact us now to find out