By Michael Butler 23rd Mar

Everything old is new again

Here at Edge one of our taglines is ‘content works’. I’ve always liked it, because both senses of its double meaning hold true for us.

As you may or may not know, we’re increasingly active on the digital front. We help our clients expand into the various online arenas (web, mobile apps, social media), either with stand-alone publications or as part of broader, multi-platform publishing strategies.

It’s been good fun, and from an editorial perspective it’s been great for me to watch our team handle these different publishing platforms so adroitly. (In fact, our most senior editor has been the most enthusiastic about exploring new digital opportunities – so much for being resistant to change!)

As with every different form of media, it’s important to understand the ins and outs; writing for the web (or LinkedIn, or a blog, or Twitter, for that matter) has its own editorial requirements and we’re comfortable with how to write across all formats to deliver the best results for our clients.

But to indulge my contrarian side, I feel compelled to note that, despite all the hype about how different forms of media and publishing are revolutionary and new, the fundamental, old-school rules and techniques of content creation apply regardless of the medium involved.

(I like to think I’ve got a bit of perspective on this, having launched and run a subscription-based website that not only survived, but positively flourished through the dot-com era … aah, good times!)

The medium may well be the message – that’s a discussion for another day – but the message must always be well-crafted if it’s going to be effective. So the copy needs to be well-written (i.e. clear and easy to read). It needs to have been subbed and fact-checked. And it needs to meet the overall standard of quality that you want to be associated with your brand.

I guess we’ve got an advantage at Edge; being a content agency with a strong heritage in publishing, we’ve got stacks of expertise in-house. So getting something as small as a Twitter post properly checked is something we can do quickly and easily.

You may not think something so short needs to be checked but I’d say the opposite is true – the shorter the message, the more important it is you get it exactly right.

And if time is really tight, our team is good enough that even their hitting-the-web-right-now copy will have quality to match its immediacy.

Which is what effective communication is all about, right?