Is Good Online Content Different from Good Offline Content?

Reading Brian Clark and Deanna Zandt on what makes for good content for blogs and social networks, I get the idea that they think it’s a different animal from what used to be considered good writing. I’m not convinced it has to be, but if it does, I’m not at all convinced it has to be different in the way Clark (in particular) says it should be, i.e., writing with “a knack for tuning in to the needs and desires of the target audience.” To me, this is putting the cart before the horse. Beginning writers, no matter what their medium, could be excused for thinking this audience-first approach is confusing and unhelpful as a guide for figuring out how to compellingly say what’s on their own minds, no matter what audience reads it, which is what good writing has always been all about.

It’s not necessarily their points about writing that lead me to the conclusion that Clark and Zandt have different ideas from mine about what makes for good writing; it’s their respective styles of writing, or, better said in Clark’s case, lack of style. It’s probably unfair to judge Zandt for taking slangy casualness to an extreme. (“Where my LinkedIn folks at?” she says. If you’re going in that direction, Deanna, why not go all the way?  Why not “peeps,” instead of folks?) Her piece was meant to be delivered live to a crowd of college students; in such an ephemeral setting, a relaxed tone is understandable if not outright forgivable. In writing, however, the style doesn’t work. Its jocular chattiness, by being so attention-stealing, stands in the way of her serious points (which I tend to agree with) about the necessity of using social media effectively in order to participate in and influence the outcome of the larger debates in the world at large.

Clark, the SEO wizard, on the other hand, I found particularly bad—all business and no pleasure. I understand that Clark’s audience comprises marketing people more than artists, activists or academics. I understand that for Clark and his audience, numeric results—hits and visits—are “the bottom line” criterion for judging “good writing.” I don’t think most human beings would agree. But Clark seems to believe that quantity of visits and height on Google’s relevancy ranking should necessarily matter more for copywriters than quality of communication, even though he claims that effective writing for the search engine equals good writing for people. Clark claims to be arguing for better quality writing than you get from copywriters who “keyword stuff” their content to trick search engine algorithms. I don’t buy it. If you write to optimize your site’s chances of landing at the top of a Google search, you’re not writing for people, you are writing for machines. You’re writing to win a numbers game, not to communicate ideas worth communicating.  It’s difficult to see that sort of content as anything more substantial than spam.

If rank in a Google search indicates copywriting prowess, then http://www.colloidalsilver.com/ must meet at least some of Clark’s criteria. It’s the highest ranking commercial site (not counting the “shopping for” list, which appears third) and seventh overall in a search for the term “colloidal silver.” A snake oil some naturopaths push in place of antibiotics for imaginary infestations of parasites, colloidal silver has been known to turn some of its fans blue after years of use. The fact that this site doesn’t place first is actually testament to Google’s preference for sites that discuss colloidal silver’s adverse effects. This unabashedly pro silver site’s home page is dense with clumsy, redundant and vague prose that, like Clark’s, spins energetically and takes the reader nowhere fast: “Fighting the dreaded bug? Relax and reach for Total Colloidal Silver® Extra Strength 120 PPM, the most effective biomedical silver available and prescribed by health wise doctors in over 15 countries.” Over 15 countries. Wow.

Seth Godin, the massively successful marketing guru, probably doesn’t need to use search engine optimization software to vet the mini essays he posts on his blog. He’s a carefully self-constructed brand, already being sought out by an audience of lesser marketers that has been following him for years. I’m more in line with Bill Hicks than Godin on marketing in general, for the record, but I have to give the latter credit for creating content that has some value beyond what he’s selling (i.e., Seth Godin himself). Take for example this post, Meeting vs. making, in which he riffs on the not terribly profound distinction between meeting a train someone else is on and having to make a train yourself and suffuses this comparison with the aura of a life lesson. (“Making is a discipline. Meeting opens the door for excuses.”) Is it a lesson worth contemplating? For some people, perhaps. But even those of us not interested in buying the Godin brand are challenged to invest some thought in his little essay’s argument. The spareness of his language focuses his point and brings his readers’ thoughts along with him.  

What about Zandt’s side of the Internet, the part of the virtual forum where ideas are not just part of the brand being sold but the actual stuff being exchanged? There, too, of course, you’ll find good writing and bad.

The worst tends to be on sites that preach to the choir of like-minded individuals. Take a right-wing blogger calling himself Mark America, for example. He displays an ability to turn a neat, memorable phrase. He’s not a bad writer. But his self-satirizing stridency impairs his ability to add anything more substantial to the national discourse than vented spleen. His post Obama’s Threats of Violence provides a fairly typical example of what I mean. Note how he refers to the Occupy Wall Street movement as “occu-pests,” how he places the president on the “extreme left,” how he tosses in code-words and phrases like “Soros/Obama backed” to indicate he’s getting his information from the “right” sources. “He’s reckless, dangerous, and increasingly, treasonous,” ‘America’ says of Obama, leaving himself open to the exact same charges. This is not the way to join a national debate. It’s a way to keep oneself marginalized as a raving nut. I know there’s a lot of this shit-stirring on the left as well—and not the extreme left, but the politically committed center left. The shouting stridency of the centers, right and left, is one reason the American political system often seems to have broken down.

This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for a partisan to take a stance, even an angry one, without coming across as strident or unable to push the debate forward. The left-wing civil libertarian blogger Glenn Greenwald engages in rhetorical battle with enemies all over the spectrum in his consistent defense of constitutional protections of civil rights. In a recent series of posts for Salon.com, Greenwald engaged (and enraged) fellow lefties over his praise of right-wing libertarian/Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s critique of American imperialism on the campaign trail.  In Democratic Party priorities, Greenwald beautifully summarizes his reasons for praising a Republican while criticizing the head of the Democratic Party in the prelude to what is shaping up to be a difficult reelection year (the emphases in bold all belong to Greenwald):

[T]he problem isn’t merely that there is nobody else with a national platform besides Paul making these arguments on issues that are vital, not secondary. The problem is worse than that: it’s that the national standard-bearer of progressives, of Democrats — Barack Obama — is largely on the opposite side of these questions. More important, his actions are the antithesis of them. Given that the presidential campaign will dominate political discourse for the next year and shape how Americans understand politics generally, it’s impossible for these views to be aired by confining oneself to cheerleading for the Obama 2012 campaign because the President is an opponent of those views. Thus, the only way these views will get an airing is by finding some other tactic, some other means, for having them heard.

For Democrats, this is not an easy message to hear. let alone swallow, but Greenwald makes his case thoughtfully, persuasively and respectfully. It has to be taken seriously. This makes for compelling content, no matter how well it might place in a Google search.