Great sites need great content. Otherwise, their greatness is greatly diminished. It’s the people who are interested in the brand who actually read what’s written there. And if what’s written there isn’t as thoughtful and compelling as the site’s structure and design, well then, that very structure and design is not going to perform as well as it might otherwise.

Why then do developers so regularly avoid embracing content creation? After all, it’s their own wonderful work that stands to gain or lose effectiveness.

One answer no doubt is that the client will provide. Often clients assume this themselves, and occasionally it is true. Occasionally clients come through with solid content to fill their site with substance and meaning, and do so in a timely manner. But often they cannot, and delays ensue and frustration and comprise and ultimately, everyone is just relieved to have something there, so the site can go live. It’s hardly the high road to excellence.

Another answer is that the agency will provide. Web developers view content as another hairball they’d rather simply obit around, so they leave it to the clients’ agency to sort out. The drawback is that agencies don’t always like long copy either. Also, they can be prohibitively expensive when a full site is in need of their attention. Furthermore, these days, the web strategy is the marketing strategy, at least in large part. So there may not even be an agency in the picture.

What it may all come down to is a feeling of fluency. We like to do what we are really good at. Web developers aren’t really good at copywriting. They are really good at web development.

But if, say, just for example, they had a partner who was, like, really good at writing, and wasn’t, like, afraid of having to produce page upon page of clear compelling content. And, just speaking hypothetically here, that partner could scale their resources, and deliver such volume work at reasonable rates, wouldn’t that be a competitive advantage?

On the other hand, for blogging and social media, the expectations are not particularly high either, so, in a sense, you can get away with it. So much for selling the writing services of Relativity Writing.

This peculiar moment in marketing evolution has given rise to a new class of creator – the non-writer writers. NWWs are people who don’t like writing, aren’t good at it, but write anyway. Like writers, NWWs offer up material of wildly varying value, interest and import. And, like writers, NWWs can become frustrated with the process. But NWWs are particularly tormented in that they have no clear reference point as to whether what they are producing is any good. They are burdened not just by the task at hand, but by the cloud of the unknown in which they operate.

The most troubled Non-Writer Writer is the involuntary one, or the INWW. INWWs are the poor folk who included writing on their resume back in the day, because, after all, they are not illiterate, who have been swept up in the publishing free for all that is the Internet and thrust into writing by their employer. Whereas the NWW is typically some entrepreneurial type, who simply can’t pass up the opportunity to communicate via social media no matter how awkward it might feel, the INWW is doing it for their job.

It is the INWWs who are most fervently waiting for the next generation of technology to mutate the marketing moment once again, and propel us into the post-blogging era. Whatever that may look like. And in that, at least, they are not alone.

But when it comes to marketing, he’s got some obstacles to overcome. Chief among these is that while many of us love new stuff, we don’t like the time it takes to understand it. The best copywriting in the world isn’t going to get people to tune for an hour.All marketing and marketing writing is a shorthand, a brief symbolic stand-in for the whole story we’ll never be patient enough to listen to. This works fine for laundry detergent. Just say something about Ring Around the Collar, and we get it. But what about truly innovative stuff we don’t know yet?

I suggested to my friend that he think in terms of what problem his technology could solve. By focusing on a benefit, he can radically compress the storytelling, while still communicating value. I gave the example of a toaster. According to Wikipedia, the fist pop up toaster was patented in 1919. I still don’t know how it works. I just know it makes toast and that I like toast, especially with glutten-free bread, which tastes pretty bad raw. I do know there’s a heating coil inside the toaster powered by electricity but if you had to explain to me all the inner workings of the toaster I’d never finish breakfast.

Marketing innovation is all about communicating application. What is the “toaster” for my friend? Perhaps sciatica pain relief. While people may never take an hour to learn about how their musculature really works, they may well download a 20-minute video to learn exercises that will relieve lower back pain. We just need to make sure not to make it too much of a pain for them to understand the benefit.

Not everything worth saying can be collapsed into a tag line or a twit. Unless you are, forgive me, a twit. Not by a long shot.

Brevity is undoubtedly a sign of excellence in some, but in others it’s how mediocrity hides. The less said the better. In brevity, bogus claims go unchallenged, because, what is there to challenge? Not much.

In media driven brevity, people are deified and then sacrificed on the same alter of public opinion. Because who has time to find out what really happened?

No wonder some clients are opting for longer form writing approaches: they have something to say.

A high tech sales organization hired Relativity Writing to develop a full on case study. Not the challenge, solution, outcome one paragraph version, but a multipage story. They have a socially conscious employment model to boast about that also happens to be a big bad competitive advantage. And they have outcomes. But you only understand the full value of the outcomes if you get the context.

Who has time to reach such a tome? Maybe decision maker considering investing significant strategic resources. They may want more to go on than a twit.

Another potential client is an Olympic gold medal winner. She experienced being recognized divine one moment and demonized the next. Perhaps for no other reason than to embellish a news cycle. She’s got great achievement in her right alongside anger, insight and reinvention. Try packing all that into a blog post. Here’s to writing a book length rebuttal of a lifetime of superficial exposure. Brevity just can’t cover it.

“Janet Napolitano,” he said, “what an idiot.”

“Hold your politics,” I laughingly brushed him off, and we left it at that.

The essay will appear in a book entitled 48 Most Intriguing Women of Arizona. I doubt all the women profiled are indeed intriguing, but Napolitano certainly is, not the least of which for her intelligence.

Napolitano is no idiot, and no amount of political or ideological disapproval can accurately put her there. Yet neither is the guy who called her an idiot. Granted, the evening was getting late and we’d watched two full focus group sessions with one to go. But where does he come off with such a blatantly inaccurate insult?

The answer it seems is ideological agreement. In a red state like AZ, this otherwise intelligent entrepreneur could allow himself to mindlessly bluster, because he expected ideological agreement to carry the day anyway.

When we agree ideologically, it doesn’t seem to matter how poorly we articulate our point, or even if we are making one at all. When our discourse is always with those who agree ideologically, we rarely get challenged on the strength of our rhetoric, whether spoken or written.

Then again, it could have just been all the M&Ms.

We’ve gotten so used to the euphemism, we don’t hear how silly it sounds.  Here’s one run of the mill usage from the New Yorker, that most fact checked of magazines, January 9^th:

“Adelstein, who was single at the time, covered the story and interviewed the dead yakuza’s meth-head girlfriend; almost immediately, they began sleeping together.”

My god, they must have been exhausted, if not downright sleep-deprived, to jump into such a joint resting arrangement so quickly.

It’s a scandal! On the news, in leading magazines and newspapers everywhere editors are allowing sleep to pass for sex. Anyone who actually sleeps with someone on a nightly basis knows, the two are far from the same. You can sleep and sleep together and never get any sleep, if you know what I mean. That is, all you do is sleep. Oh, never mind.

Are we really too delicate to read sex written as, well, sex? I mean you don’t have to deploy fuck. (Although sometimes it feels fucking good to do so). And lovemaking may be giving too much credit. Who knows how much affection was actually produced? Screwed goes too far the other way, reducing the act to a hardware store analogy. So how about not judging it one way or the other and just writing that when people have sex, they have sex?

In a current book project I’m writing for the men’s fashion designer Remo Tulliani the subject ostensibly is success and how different people have arrived at it. The book will include interviews with a broad mix of men who have made it from Warner star-maker John Esposito to the designer Donald Pliner to Muhammed Ali.

But the story that runs in parallel to these men’s insights on focus, passion, vision and whatever else helped them get the top, is Tulliani’s own search for connection, mentoring and friendship along the way.

By telling both stories, rather than just one of them, we not only enrich the readers experience, we broaden our readership to include more people. So it’s not just good storytelling, it’s good marketing as well.

It’s gotten so cool to be different, that everybody claims to be different, typically in the same ways as their competitors. So what happens when you really are different?

It’s a strange situation when you truly are an outlier, that all your claims, in the short hand of copywriting, rather than differentiating you, actually camouflage you into the crowd.

Terms like “leading edge” become labels for mediocrity. The promise of “integrity” can be read as ethically average. Simply because they are put in play so often.

Ad agencies are a great example. What agency doesn’t claim to listen and to dig deep and to be strategic, not just creative? This can be exceedingly frustrating to agencies who really do the legwork and have no way of bragging about it.

The difference doesn’t come across in the claim, but in how you claim it. The writing and images used signal difference in a way that the claim alone cannot.

When an  Asset Management firm uses a term like “friendship” rather than the cliche of “partnering”, it sends a ripple through the marketing matrix. When an ad agency admits to being driven by a “fear of failure”, it makes the claim of strategic rigor that much more meaningful. These writing choices signal difference where claims often fall short.

These days, even edgier positions are common place and have to be paid off in writing that reflects an alternative mindset. After all, they’re playing the Clash in Trader Joe’s.

As a Cancerian, I understand. In a wide open world crammed with content relevant, irrelevant and everything in between, the niche is where you can find calm in the chaos. It’s a snug little spot people of a particular mindset curl up in, waiting to hear just the right message, through just the right media, signaling to them to emerge.

The more noise in the marketplace, the more refined that signal must be to get through. You can try to crack the shell with shear weight of content, but that is costly, time consuming and ultimately destructive of the conversation itself. Far better to write your way in, crafting content that curves with the contour of the niche. You may not have to make it all the way inside,  just far enough to draw out the cozy creatures within.

Writing for the niche can feel confined , but really it is freeing. You can stop holding back for fear of offending those who will never respond in the first place. You can say the wrong thing to the wrong people, in order to express the right thing to the right people.  They are just waiting for the signal.

I recently attended the Las Vegas Book Fair, a weirdly sinless event for that city. An MFA student from UNLV read a short piece to an audience of about four, and felt compelled to acknowledge two others for their contribution to her work, as if the tepid applause she received from the four of us was too much glory to accept all to herself. The next reader, also a student, apologized in advance for having published his work in only minor literary journals, displaying the kind of massive ego that will only grow with the lack of recognition over time. Never the less, he read well.

I was introduced to Jane Smiley, author of  A Thousand Acres, Moo, Greenlanders, our headliner for the afternoon. From the podium, speaking to a full room of people, Smiley paid homage to writers’ blind ambition, saying that you know you’re a writer if you just sort of keep at it no matter what, against all odds, against all evidence that you’re getting nowhere, etc.

You hear this exhortation in some form or other at every writer’s event. The trouble is that while it’s sincerely true for Ms. Smiley, it’s patently untrue for the vast majority of those listening. For them, this is merely delusion without a clock.

The real question shadowing MFA programs isn’t whether great writers can be taught or not, which Luis Menand knocked around in the New Yorker in June of 2009. That’s like the mystery of the afterlife, you’ll only know when you get there and it may well be too late. The more tangible question is what are all these aspiring writers with their MFA’s going to do when they graduate?

Their degree qualifies them to do what? Teach in MFA programs. That’s like having the number one prospect for law school graduates be teaching in other law schools. Why are all these writers, these inventors of stories, these articulators of the human imagination, imagining themselves into jobs that don’t exist, when they could be preparing for work that does–ghostwriting, copywriting, technical writing, grant writing.

And while I’m at it . . . why are literary readings so boring? Even in Las Vegas! In every case, including Smiley, the writers’ comments off the cuff were considerably more interesting than the readings themselves. The moment the authors’ eyes left the audience and went to the page, all energy fled the room.

Here we are in a city seemingly zoned for excess, where no architectural idea is too absurd to get approved, funded and built, and supposedly the real creators, artists, and their dedicated fans, are in a room staring at the ceiling or the back of the bored head in front of them. Can’t we do better than this?

I was left pondering these questions, as I walked the Strip with my host, author Kris Saknnussemm, our literary torpor finally lifted by the sheer exuberance and un self-conscious vulgarity of it all. Las Vegas saved me from literature.