Why written content matters

Why bother with blog posts, articles and whitepapers anymore, when you can press the red button on your phone’s camera and start communicating?

But written content matters, even in a world where the top social networks are notable for two things – they are primarily visual mediums, and they measure their monthly active users in the billions*.

While you might think the odds of photos and videos being seen on the internet are higher than articles and case studies, there are so many reasons written content reigns supreme for serious start-ups – and not all of them are about being seen.

Written content matters because it is often the most fulsome expression of your company’s reason for being. I’m not religious, but I had a Christian upbringing, and in the bible John 1:1 says in the beginning there was the word. And the bible – which is obviously hugely influential – is a book of stories.

Which says to me that stories matter. So we share long form written content (and even a 300 word blog post is a kind of long form writing) to make sense of our stories. And to clarify our thinking – seeing our purpose, goals and – most importantly – our customer proposition written down shows us what matters and what doesn’t. What is worth spending our time and money on and – by its absence – what isn’t.

Written content is more than just an act of creation – it’s a quest for meaning and an exercise in finding clarification. A solid foundation from which to produce all those gorgeous photos and videos those social apps love so much.

*Actually three things – three of the top five are owned by the same company – how that got past the US Federation Trade Commission would involve a lot more than an endnote, but a good place to start is the 2017 seminal research by current FTC chair Lina Khan ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’.