By that I mean: is the term ‘content’ going the way of the term ‘solution’? You know, morphing from a perfectly fine word to one that’s meaningless and cliched.
I first started brooding about content after a recent meeting. The poor word was bandied about like a badminton birdie by tennis pros (groan). It was content this and content that, and leverage the content, and who’s going to repurpose the content, and what’s your content strategy for the repurposed content, and I’ll send you my content if you send me yours… By the end my head was spinning and content was turning into a shadow of its former self.
That’s too bad.
The word is a useful catch-all to describe the stories, info, visual and written materials and other bits and bytes we’re producing for social channels. And it makes sense why it’s being used.
But I’m worried it’s about to get verbed: that is, transformed from a noun to a verb (which ironically happened to verb in this context, but that’s a subject for another post).
And then we’ll start hearing sentences like: ‘I’m going to take those messages and content them into something usable by tomorrow’ or ‘Great brainstorm! Let’s content all these ideas for Faceboook, Twitter and our blog…’
So before that happens, let’s start a movement to save content from a verbing assault and the junk-heap of business jargon. Anyone want to join me?
Wow. I hadn’t really noticed it until reading this but you’re absolutely right. I’d weep if I ever heard some say “Let’s content all these ideas” and mean it.
Like you, I feel that the word itself (as it’s meant to be used) is a good one. But I can see the slippery slope you’re painting here and I’m making the mental note to make sure it doesn’t happen on my watch!