Content Strategy for the Web, Second Edition

2. Problem

GREAT CONTENT MEETS USERS’ NEEDS and supports key business objectives. It engages and informs. It’s well-written and intuitively organized. It keeps people coming back for more. But when content sucks—when it’s overwritten, redundant, hard to find, irrelevant—people come, look, and leave. And, sometimes, they never come back. Most of the content we find online is simply in the way—even outdated or straight-up inaccurate. It’s not doing what we need it to do. And somehow, we can’t seem to get it fixed. It’s always the elephant in the room, the one thing no one really wants to talk about. And man, that is one ugly elephant.

So whose fault is this content crisis, anyway? And who’s going to clean up this mess?

No Finger-Pointing Allowed ...