Something there is that doesn’t love a factory.  It’s not just the grimy smokestacks, heat or the piercing ring of steel on steel, but the soulless labor of a mill.  When I hear “content” — the work of inspiration and genius — juxtaposed with “factory,” it’s the crash of two opposed worlds colliding.

I’ve worked in a factory, a steel processing plant where I operated drill presses, drop presses, shears, lathes and bandsaws — heavy, fast-moving equipment that can rip your arm off if you look away for a second. When I speak of factory work, it’s from the experience of a man who has stood 8 hours a day, six days a week at a drop press, bending thousands of pieces of steel re-bar, one-by-one, to reinforce the concrete slab that keeps your house from tumbling over.

On breaks or at lunch time, I might go out in the sun and lay back on a bag of steel bolts to read “Ode to A Grecian Urn” — something a marketing executive today would reduce to the lowest common denominator and call “content.”  Friends kept a respectful distance.  I must’ve had this look that said I was thousands of miles away, maybe on the Spanish Steps where John Keats walked.  And I still would be — transported far off in spirit — when I re-entered the dark, clattering, hissing cavern of the steel plant.  I was 20, and I knew that the “content” I loved and the factory I loathed were as far removed, one from the other, as is heaven from hell.

Today when companies talk about creating “content factories,” it jars on the ear.  I have a hard time putting those two words together, at least until I realize what the social media shop floor boss means by content: blogs and tweets turned out quickly, cheaply and uniformly, like any other assembly line product.  That kind of content certainly fits in a factory environment, so it all makes sense.

Or does it?  The ostensible goal of this content is to attract the public’s interest and drive traffic to the company’s web site.  But will people care about content that holds no more life, spirit or interest than a hunk of pig iron?  If you try to run creativity through a mill, quality suffers. Lose that spark of genius that makes great content unique, and lose the people, too.

Look at the world’s truly great bloggers: in the business arena, Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Chris Brogan, and on the political front courageous dissidents such as China’s Liu Xiaobo, Iran’s Mohammed Ali Abtahi and Myanmar’s Nay Myo Kyaw.  It makes no difference whether they blog 10X per day or only once per month: When they reach out to the world, it’s to say something significant.  These remarkable individuals write from the heart, never to meet a production quota or deadline.  For that reason, each has enjoyed a huge following.

Years ago when I started this company, my first prospective client wanted to speak to a member of the press as a reference.  The Washington Post’s Mike Mills said he’d be glad to, and proceeded to pay me the highest honor I’ve ever received:

“When Jim Crawford calls, I pick up because I know it’s important.”

We won that first account.  And since then, whether it’s in a blog or any form of communication, I’ve always tried to live up to Mike’s words.  Were I to call the media just for the sake of doing so, or blog whether or not I had anything to say, who would listen?  No one.

Tags: blog consulting, blogging for business, tech pr, wep pr
Posted in Blog, Web 2.0 | One Comment
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