In a world where online content is the strongest influencer of a business’s success, it’s important to make sure that the content we publish is consistently at the top of its game.

Like all other business assets, content has both an extrinsic and intrinsic value:

Extrinsic Value of Content – How much it costs to maintain physical resources (both human and technological) to create, publish and govern content.

Intrinsic Value of Content – How much the content is worth to a company in terms of messaging, positioning, reputation and sales.

When Assets Resemble Liabilities

Of course the prior is the one that many organizations focus on with respect to their bottom line. As a result, they only see content as a liability as opposed to an asset because the outlay of capital required to pay for content is steep. Good content costs money.

Content’s sell at the boardroom table, therefore, is to focus on its intrinsic value. Business is about numbers. If we can’t show quantitative results related to ROI (and we can’t.. at least not directly), the only way to get buy-in for creating, publishing and governing content is to focus on its intrinsic value to the organization.

What Is Intrinsic Value?

Intrinsic value really comes down to worth. For instance, paper money may be worth the denomination indicated, but the paper it’s printed on might only be worth pennies. So a Content Strategist’s job is to figure out how much content is actually worth to an organization.

Determining Intrinsic Value

Typically, intrinsic value has a number associated with it.

Since content doesn’t exist in a bubble, and typically forms part of a greater Marketing/Communications/Customer Service Management effort, these need to be factored into the overall equation to provide the most accurate assessment of a content’s intrinsic value.

While the math here is simple, arriving at the numbers to plug into the equation may be a lot harder. On your part, it might require some educated guess-timating based on budgets and other tracking metrics in place.

Regardless, it doesn’t take a statistician to see that the number you arrive at for the intrinsic value is far greater than what many people give content credit for – especially when you compare it to its liability-disguised extrinsic value.

Cost Benefit Analysis

Most organizations don’t invest in assets until they’ve performed a Cost Benefit Analysis of the acquisition in question. Here’s where many Content Strategists’ arguments fail to win over the CFO. It’s one thing to say “content is a business asset”, it’s another to prove it. A “just because” answer in business is the equivalent to saying that the organization should bring in a circus every month as it could raise the morale of employees and, in turn, potentially increase productivity. Bollocks!

A cost benefit analysis adds up all of the positive factors for making a business decision and puts them up against the sum of all of the negatives (usually the hard cost of doing something). The difference between the two gives organizations an indication of whether something is advisable to do, or not.

Here’s where the intrinsic value of content comes in handy. The arguments by the business are usually hung up around expenses (the negatives). By having already calculated the intrinsic value of content, you now have a sound business case and quantifiable argument for continuing to invest in what you know (and can soon prove) to be the organization’s biggest asset — its content!

A Common Scenario:

Traditional marketing/communications managers or even CEO’s read web content and automatically dismiss the value in it because it doesn’t read the way they think it “should”:

- Long, complex sentence structures
- Third person voice
- Gobbledygook business terms
- Written from the perspective of the business (“We”)
- Industry or corporate acronyms

The Problem:

The above represents a style and tone that has become synonymous with “professional”, “credible” and “authoritative”. But, it’s a style that doesn’t work on the web.

The Solution:

So, how do content writers within an organization help to change the perceptions of content writing in those who are accustomed to the out-dated traditions of the passive voice?

1. Web Analytics Data
2. Word Clouds

First, analyze your analytics.

Note which pages are being read, and which ones aren’t. 9 times out of 10, the pages that are most important to the organization aren’t even close to being in the top 10 of those being viewed by your target audience. If it’s a document that’s important to the company, but clearly not important to the reader, then you have to ask why it’s even being offered online in the first place.

[Of course, I know how large organizations work and I know that pulling down the "Important Company Document" is never going to happen. So this is when you move to step 2 - revising the content!]

Next, start by creating a word cloud of the page in question.

In content marketing, we use word clouds to illustrate the prominence of keywords within a web page. In this case, use the word cloud as a way of demonstrating organization-centric vocabulary and messaging. Here’s a word cloud I created from a web page on the Government of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans website:

From the words alone, you can tell this is a traditional “top-down” approach to messaging.

Next, rewrite the content in a manner keeping with proper writing for the web techniques:

- Using the researched vocabulary of your target audience
- Plain language
- Short, sound-bite sentences
- Bulleted lists
- Task-oriented
- 150-250 words maximum (if possible)
- Proper use of headers and calls to action

Then, create another word cloud of the revised content:

This word cloud still contains organizational vocabulary, but you can see clearly the message has tipped in favour of a more balanced approach biased towards the target audience – gone are the acronyms and prominence of organizational program names.

Using this method, factual data and qualitative illustrations stress the results of proper web content writing and serve to bolster support for the investment of time and resources from those who still control both budgets and message.

Related Video:

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

Without it, budget allocation would simply be an irrationally emotive decision based on the whims of its spender.

ROI Is Not Dead!

Since the tech bubble of 2000, many in the Web industry have tried to sell businesses on the esoteric concept that ROI is dead …that the “new” ROI can’t be distilled into a quantifiable equation.

Sadly, ten years later, that argument erroneously remains. For many it is simply easier to justify what it is that we do by telling clients to “pay no attention to [what goes on] behind the curtain”.

But if we were “really great and powerful we’d keep our promises” ….to ourselves and to our clients by actively demonstrating the very real business value web professionals (content strategists, information architects, user experience practitioners etc.) bring to business.

ROI Redux

The ROI equation was born of a time when input and output were quantifiably linked. Standardization of resources in the Industrial Revolution sought to lower investment costs as a direct means of increasing gains.

ROI Redux of the Knowledge-Based Economy

Today, the return on investment in web content strategy, web design and web writing is in the longer term value of online relationship building. Dollars once allocated to three-martini lunch expense accounts and golf club memberships are making a comeback in the form of online content (text, images, video, audio, social) that equally connects and engages with target audiences in meaningful ways.

This ROI Redux is less focused on the immediate 1:1 ratio of dollar input to dollar result and more centered on the longer-term business value of relationship-building.

In essence, the print collateral days of “brochures” and “marketing kit folders” were very much a product of the Industrial Revolution model of marketing. ROI Redux on the web, however, means that a well-thought out website and ongoing web strategy can continue to inspire and create conversations online long after brochure-ware ever could.

Investment in a professional web content strategy and writing does yield business results. It’s now just up to organizations to determine the value and worth of solving for X

ROI = (X – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

That’s why organizations that use gobbledygook business terms or industry jargon on the web decrease the value of their message by failing to connect and engage with audiences online.

So when we talk, in business, in terms of “verticals” or, in government, in terms of “branches”, and then structure websites to mimic this approach to organizing information, the potential for even greater dissociation with our target audience exists.

Now you aren’t just using words that hold no meaning for your target audience, you’re also labeling important navigational elements in a way that provide little context within your target audience’s frame of reference.

The tricky part about meaning is that what is significant to you may not be significant to all. Significance is determined by background, experiences, culture, values, etc.

Words Are As Much A “Signifier” As They Are A Conveyer Of “Significance”

Last September, Jeff Parks of i.a. consultants inc and I put on workshops in Jamaica through the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce. Jeff asked participants to organize colored candy pieces in any way they liked as a way of illustrating how organizational bias can influence how website’s are structured and navigational elements labeled.

It’s amazing the many different ways you can organize the same six colors!

In a conversation between two people, both have the opportunity to clarify ambiguities to derive meaning and understanding. Unless organizations are willing to do their homework up front to properly identify their target audience, and then research and define the vocabulary they use when referring to, and finding, specific products and services online …the messaging on their website will always be a one-sided conversation. Organizational bias is just one of the reasons many companies hire web content strategists and writers to bring a fresh perspective to their company’s website.

If you are interested in learning more about how to structure and label information in a way that is valuable to your target audience and your business, Jeff and I will be putting on similar workshops to those we conducted in Jamaica last year. Find out more at http://www.followtheuxleader.com

Finding the perfect word, or string of words in traditional marketing was typically left in the hands of the creatives whose manipulation of the poetics of language could sway even the most unfavorable of arguments in support of their pitch.

But for the countless “power words” that drive enterprise, there are many more that have become so ingrained in the established lexicon of business that they have lost all meaning …and influence.

In the words of marketing strategist and author, David Meerman Scott, these cliched terms are nothing more than “Gobbledygook“.

And let me tell you, as a writer, Gobbledygook is what business leaders are conditioned to look for when determining “good”, “quality” content. The more hyperbole, the more professional and “business-like” the content sounds …or at least that’s how it used to be.

The problem with Business Gobbledygook, of course, is that it’s generic, bland, overused and speaks at the customer …not with them, in the terms that they use and value.

Dow Jones Analysis Of Gobbledygook

“The folks at the Factiva Reputation Lab used text mining tools to analyze news releases sent by companies in North America. Factiva analyzed each release in its database that had been sent to one of the North American news release wires it distributes. The news release wires included in the analysis were Business Wire, Canada newsWire, CCnMatthews, Commweb.com, Market Wire, Moody’s, PR newswire, and Primezone Media network.”

~ The Gobbledygook Manifesto

The Top 10 Gobbledygook Words and Phrases in 2008

Dow Jones Insight Ranks Most Used Gobbledygook Terms

“Another major drawback of the generic gobbledygook approach is that it doesn’t make your company stand out from the crowd. Here’s a test: take the language that the marketers at your company dreamed up and substitute the name of a competitor and the competitor’s product for your own. Does it still make sense to you? Marketing language that can be substituted for another company’s isn’t effective in explaining to a buyer why your company is the right choice.”

~ David Meerman Scott, The Gobbledygook Manifesto

While the business community continues to speak “gobbledygook” offline, there is no value in puffing up websites with language that does nothing to connect with target audiences online. If you only have 150 words to work with on a web page before users click the back button, that leaves little room for “angel food fluff”.

Search Engines Put The Words Back Into Customer’s Mouths

Search engine optimization changed the rules of the game a number of years ago when businesses fought for page rank using search engine results for keywords and keyword phrases. Except what search engine marketers did was the opposite of what traditional marketers do – they looked to the vocabulary of their target audience (not the gobbledygook of corporate speak) to saturate their content with the very words they knew their customers used to find the products and services they were selling.

Keywords Are Big Business

“Around half the companies (49%) are reallocating budgets to search engine marketing from print advertising. More than a third (36%) are shifting money away from direct mail, and almost a quarter are moving budgets from conferences and exhibitions (24%) and web display advertising (23%)”

~ 2010 State of Search Engine Marketing Report, BusinessWire

Until Search Engine Optimization came along, it was very hard to place a dollar value on words alone. While SEO was good for writers to finally be able to justify the importance of their role to the business community, the downside was in compromising the readability (i.e. usability) of content at the expense of optimization (i.e. keywords).

A Fine Balance

“SEO copywriting ‘techniques’ – as they are commonly understood today – represent a bastardized version of copywriting that’s not good for customers, not good for users and serves up pure schlock… Sadly, most people never talk about the second half of the SEO copywriting equation – the half that’s even more important than keywords. And that’s writing compelling, interesting and persuasive content designed to communicate with your customers.”

~ SEO Copywriting is Dead, Long Live SEO Content Marketing

The bygone era of Madison Avenue and martini lunches may have set corporate America on the path to respecting the influence of words, but the information age has solidified that relationship with the need to provide quality content using the researched vocabulary of an intended target audience.

“Consider this: While 30-second Super Bowl commercials cost $2.6 million each and reach 80 million people, the One Times Square tower draws 211 million pairs of eyeballs when the New Year’s Eve ball drops … According to media sellers, the rental prices for ad real estate varies widely depending, in part, on size and — like everything else in Manhattan — location.”

~ Advertising Age, The Cost of Advertising on Times Square

While the CPM model does apply to online advertising campaigns, the effectiveness of web content as a whole can’t be measured by the number of “eyes” landing on a web page alone.

So why do so many people focus their ROI on the number of “Hits” and “Page Views” their website receives?

Anyone who has visited Times Square can tell you the barrage of billboard advertising can lead to a sensory overload of colors, lights and imagery. So much so, that although you might see an ad, you probably don’t entirely absorb its message. The same applies to the web:

Web Pages May Be Viewed But Not Read

Most web content writers will use the “Average Time On Page” from Google Analytics as a rudimentary way of determining the effectiveness of their web content. I know the statistical “before and after” results garnered from web content projects I have worked on show convincing arguments towards professionally written web content.

A generally accepted Google Analytics target-result in my industry takes “Average Time On Page” from seconds (before) to over 2 minutes (after).

The ambiguity of the results, of course, leads us to assume in our favor. We choose to believe that the web content we have written is connecting and engaging with its intended target audience. But the increased time on page could just as easily be doing otherwise.

Web Content Is An Incredible Marketing Opportunity!

While Google Analytics may only be able to report broad results similar to the CPM of a billboard in Times Square, web content offers something print content can’t:

Web Content Is Bolstered By Technology

What this means is that interactions with a web page – clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements – can be tracked to determine the effectiveness of the web content on it: video, audio, images and copy. These results (both individual and aggregated) give organizations invaluable feedback on whether their website is working or not …and how!

I believe that web content is a valuable business asset. I have worked in traditional marketing, communications and advertising, and the reason I love the web is because it is the only medium that can deliver reports and results based on concrete data.

Until now, I’ve only been able to “tell” clients about the value of web content based on what I know as a web professional working in this industry since 1999. Thanks to the generous support of ClickTale, however, I’m now going to be able to show you. ClickTale has given DigitalWord a free three-month subscription to track, analyze, and monitor this website and blog as a means of “showing” results. My goal is to be able to share with clients and readers alike, how

- mouse move heatmaps
- attention heatmaps
- scroll reach heatmaps
- click heatmaps
- link analytics

can give us contextualized data that will help to create better online experiences, and in turn, demonstrate the ROI of a quality web content strategy and professionally written web content.

Many thanks to Shmuli Goldberg, Director of Marketing and Communications at ClickTale for believing in and supporting this approach to illustrating the business value of web content

…and to Jeff Parks of i.a. consultants inc. for making this important introduction and connection between DigitalWord and ClickTale.

Sadly, the same holds true on the Web. Businesses often overlook the value of web content as being both a driver of new business and a vehicle for customer service. Since most web projects are still managed the same as print publications, web content is very much an after-thought both in scope and budget.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, web content writing looks deceptively simple and straight-forward on the surface. How much time could it possibly take to write 150 words? Even as a writer I often fall into that trap, failing to remember my own rule:

The problem with forgetting about all of the “stuff” that goes on below the surface, is that companies fail to accommodate and invest in the time it takes to do the proper homework necessary to create websites that deliver long-term value.

Here is the dollar breakdown of two recent web projects with total project budgets equalling CDN$20,000 or higher.

New Website Project:

Website Redesign Project:

The problem I have with this kind of project budget breakdown is that it UNDERVALUES the longer term business value of the website.

If the purpose of your website is to attract, engage and retain customers, then why are you investing less than 15% of your website budget to the very thing that drives over 80% of your business?

Reality Check:

- Web Content Is Your Primary Driver of Website Traffic – Keywords and Organic Search Engine Optimization are Critical

- Web Content Makes the Sale and Closes The Deal – Clear Headers and Calls To Action Are Key

- Web Content Provides Information, Facilitates Usability, Connects and Engages With Customers, and Supports Brand Messaging – Web Content Strategy Is Paramount

Don’t get me wrong. The back-end of a website is just as important as the front end. The web development portion of any web project budget will always be the most weighty. However, to simply throw what’s left of any budget towards the content portion of the project in the hopes that it will deliver “some” value is not only short-sighted …it’s just plain dumb!

How Much Do You Think These Companies Value Their Business?

The following is a screenshot of freelance web content writing projects posted on elance.com.

The scary part isn’t that web content writers are willing to work at an hourly wage equal to that of the Great Depression (perhaps the undervaluing of content is one propagated within our own ranks…), it’s that companies are willing to risk their future sales and potential viability as a business in an effort to save a few bucks!

Web Content Is A Business Asset

Here is some feedback that I received on a recent project for a company that took the time to properly investigate how web content could help grow and solidify their business. Their investment in properly researched and written web content paid off within a week of launch. Here is a direct message that I received on Twitter from agile coach, Dave Rooney

Web content is intrinsically tied to a company’s overall business strategy. If a web content writer cannot convey the value of your business in a meaningful way that delivers results, then all you have invested in is pretty copy that is lovely to read and nothing more.

Companies: Understand and value web content in a way that will cause you to seek out the best content writers and engage them accordingly. You will assuredly reap the rewards of your investment (ROI) both in website traffic and in sales.

Writers: Mind your worth! How is anyone going to value what you do if you do not place value on it yourself? Stand up for what you are worth and others will value that worth in turn.

“Would you go to the gas station and ask for free gas? Would you go to the doctor and ask them to take out your spleen for nothing? How dare you call me and want me to work for nothing?

They always want the writer to work for nothing and the problem is there’s so many goddamn writers who have no idea that they’re supposed to be paid every time they do something they do it for nothing.

I sell my soul but at the highest rates.”

~ Harlan Ellison

As Kristina Halvorson, president of Brain Traffic and author of Content Strategy for the Web, proclaimed in February of this year:

“Content strategy will soon be getting more attention than social media… Content strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago.”

I knew that.

But few businesses do. Most know that the web development process doesn’t go as smoothly as they’d like …and even more recognize the need for an editorial process or publishing schedule after their websites go live ….but the majority don’t even know where to go to find a solution.


The Solution Is In Education and Awareness
…but how do you learn more about a burgeoning field like web content strategy?


Sign-Up For A Training Workshop!

Follow The UX Leader is a professional development workshop series created for organizations looking for hands-on knowledge in managing and supporting their corporate websites through content strategy and user experience design.

These aren’t the typical web courses you’d find at a local college or online. They’re hands-on, interactive and designed for non-technical people who often find themselves in roles where the web is also their responsibility. The goal is to give you the basics of web content writing, design and management – in one day – with practical experiences and knowledge you can bring back to your office and apply right away.

Workshops are currently scheduled for September/October 2010 in Ottawa, Canada, with additional locations and venues coming soon.

[disclosure: Follow The UX Leader is a joint initiative of Digitalword and its partner company i.a. consultants inc.]



Join A Local Web Content Strategy Meet-Up!

Web Content Strategy Meet-Ups are springing up all around the world on the heels of this year’s very successful Content Strategy Forum 2010 in Paris. If you are unable to attend the upcoming Web Content 2010 in Chicago in June, a local Web Content Strategy Meet-Up will initiate you into the benefits and challenges of this burgeoning discipline.

Local Ottawa professionals seeking to connect with other web content strategists, information architects and web content writers are invited to attend the inaugural Web Content Strategy Meet-Up Ottawa on May 18, 2010 with regular meetings to follow monthly starting in September.

[disclosure: Web Content Strategy Meet-Up Ottawa is sponsored by Digitalword]

Web content strategy isn’t a passing fad. It’s here to stay. As websites balloon to ten times their size and ever-changing social media campaigns are continuously added-on as after-thoughts, it’s time we got serious about the information organizations present online.

“…the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.”

~ The Economist, Special Report On Managing Information, February 2010

In the interest of time (of which they have little), they invariably break the first cardinal rule of web content review as they bravely take on the company’s role of de facto editor:

“Thou Shalt Not Forward The First Draft Of Web Content To Staff, Friends And Family For Feedback And Comments”

In the business owner’s defense, their rationale is sound. After all, colleagues and internal staff know the business inside out and should be able to provide constructive criticism on the information presented, while non-industry friends and family can give honest feedback on whether or not they “liked” the writing itself.

The problem, in the end, is that each member of this hodgepodge review team brings his/her own bias to the editorial process making it more convoluted and less constructive than the business owner ever intended it to be.

De facto editorial teams typically:

- Extend the content phase of the web development process; and can,
- Skew the design and messaging off course entirely.

Here’s why:

All successful website projects must start by defining the main goal or purpose of the website. Simply having a website because “everyone else has one” doesn’t really qualify as a quantifiable objective against which you can measure results.

A website’s purpose may be to increase brand awareness, build customer relationships, provide information, or serve as an additional sales channel thus predominantly dictating web content requirements including choice of tone and style to “speak” to the identified target audience for whom the website is intended.

Nota Bene: Your website’s purpose drives your web content — and your web content drives everything else including the design and site navigation structure.

So, when a well-intentioned business owner shares the first draft of web content with a group of “editors” who were not involved in defining the website’s goal or messaging in the first place, the comments and feedback received are of limited value at this stage of the editorial process.

Reality Check:

- Staff often have a myopic view of the company as filtered through the lens of their own day-to-day jobs and experiences.

- Friends and family have varied experiences that can alter their perception of the content focusing in on style, tone, and grammar instead of key messaging and positioning.

- Staff, board members, friends and family are often not your target audience.

- Few are versed in the usability aspects of web content (text is scanned – not read; web pages aren’t sequential; SEO alters sentence structure and vocabulary choice; etc.)

- Fewer still recognize that writing for the web is different than writing for print (which, right away, negates the comments from a next door neighbour who happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, or a sister who writes children’s books in her spare time)

This is why, business owners who share the first draft of their web content with too many unqualified individuals (i.e. those who were not privy to the initial web strategy planning meetings) typically end up getting confused and being forced off course by trying to amalgamate all feedback into one cohesive content solution.

This leads to either additional revision cycles, or worse, unnecessary rewrites at the expense of a project’s budget, timeline …and ultimate goal.

Solution:

- Include all relevant staff and/or colleagues during initial website strategy meetings. These individuals will then form your editorial review team for the first draft of content. Team members should include all business partners (stakeholders/decision makers), as well as representatives from marketing, sales, admin and/or IT (if feasible/applicable).

- Include the web copywriter in all discussions pertaining to the web development project, especially those involving strategy, branding, and design.

- Wait until the 2nd or final draft before soliciting input from other colleagues, staff, board members, friends and family.

Websites are as much about creative expression as they are about functional information delivery. From the look and feel to the style and tone, it’s easy to get swayed by personal preference. By focusing on the website’s purpose and target audience, web content review becomes much more about “hitting the mark” with respect to positioning and messaging …than about shivers on the back of the neck subjectively-induced from reading well-written prose.

“What about Twitter? Is Twitter considered web content?”

It’s a good question.

Digitalword is a web content company, and Twitter is certainly a continuous channel of content (both good and bad), indexed in real time by Google’s search engine results, whose very definition is: “micro-blogging in 140 characters or less”.

Combine this with the fact that more and more conferences for professionals in conventional industries like accounting, financial planning, dentistry, interior design, and law are featuring presentations given by social media experts from my own industry evangelizing Twitter with “adopt or become obsolete” fervor that leaves conference participants thoroughly confused as to whether 140 characters will make or break their entire careers.

While the Twitter content question is a fair one to ask – the tone of apprehension, hesitation, nervousness and wonderment with which they approach the question is one best reserved for things of greater importance …like private counsel with the Dalai Lama, perhaps. (I hold those in my industry accountable for making Twitter sound more complicated than it needs to be and, really, more important than it should be for many.)

Reality Check:

Twitter is a great way to:

- build relationships
- share knowledge with like-minded professionals
- expand networks
- increase your circle of influence
- provide online customer service

Twitter is not a great way to:

- provide customer service if your customers aren’t on Twitter
- provide customer service if you deal with sensitive or confidential information (while a well-intentioned @ reply to “bunnyslippermom” might seem covert enough to get around your corporate privacy policy, Twitter is still very much in the public domain)
- build relationships if your target audience isn’t on Twitter
- build your personal or corporate brand if you aren’t going to put the time in to Tweet regularly

Note: Twitter will NOT make you a better dentist, lawyer, or accountant, but it can grow your client base (if that’s something you want/need to do) and it can be a great source of information (although for many of the more conventional industries, newsletters and conferences are still the preferred way to disseminate critical content).

When I founded Digitalword in 2005, it was based on the principal that all websites need professionally written web content in order to be successful. Fast forward to 2010 and I am now forced to re-evaluate the definition of “web content” with each client meeting I have:

“So, do you write scripts for online video?” – not yet. “Do you write content for blogs?” – let’s talk. “Can you research and write content for Twitter?” – no.

Here’s why.

Twitter isn’t really micro-blogging. The best comparison I have for clients is that Twitter is the 21st Century equivalent to the early 20th Century telephone party line. Twitter allows you to listen in on countless conversations for snippets of information that may or may not be relevant to you. Twitter allows you to hold conversations in soundbite format (Tweets) with other Tweeps (Twitter users) for all to hear and contribute to. And, Twitter lets you broadcast your own musings, rants, perceptions, and experiences in touret-like fashion for catharsis …or, if you’re lucky, validation.

As such, Twitter is a written, verbal conversation typed out in 140 characters like a public text message …making the content more about YOU, the individual, than about simply the words and messaging on the page. In order for Twitter to be effective, the conversation needs to be authentic, transparent, and …as juicy as the party line fodder devoured by the gossip-mongers of days past.

Twitter becomes your “voice” for you, and you alone, to leverage in the Twittersphere. Like it or not, your voice cannot be outsourced.