Content Pros Update is a free, monthly recap newsletter of all goings-on from The Content Technologist, including overviews of our most recent articles, events, and more.
Upcoming events
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MIMA Next Conference: Your future overlords need your help
November 9, 2023 | 12:00-9:00 PM
Hosted at Urban Daisy in northeast Minneapolis
Hey Twin City locals! Have you gotten your ticket to the MIMA Next Conference yet? Our very own Deborah Carver will be joining a panel of other humans to discuss our future working relationship with AI robots.
Salon: Never go out of style — Keys to stand-out digital content
December 1, 2023 | 12:00-1:30 PM Eastern
Online only: $10 for members, $60 for non-members
In the age of automation and replication, style sets your content apart and makes it more human. But what is style, exactly? Get ideas for how to cultivate and advocate for content style in your organization; identify tools and tips for keeping style on-brand; and help us define the different dimensions of digital style.
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Recent essays
Here's a rundown of the essays we published this month:
“Content” isn’t the enemy: Keeping content creative, not generative
By Deborah Carver
Publisher Deborah Carver steps into the ring to weigh on recent media criticism of the word "content," suggesting that the budgets allocated to content production and the possibilities of generating "form" with AI should be where our attention lies.
Recent pieces in The New York Times and Slate offer up the term "content" as sacrifice, arguing that craft and art get washed away when anything described as content is seen as interchangeable.
"The term doesn't just de-professionalize the creation of art and culture by implying that it's all just more chum to feed to customers too hungry to say no," Aaron Bady wrote in Slate last month.
I don't disagree with Bady's assessment, but I'd wager the attitude he describes comes more from paternalistic 20th-century conceptions of the consumer as a dull receptive brain with no ability to learn, create, or change. Whether media and tech executives call it "content" or "writing," the attitude toward both creators and audiences is the same, and the budget line item is seen as expendable or replaceable.
Building systems for replicable project success
by Natasha Serafimovska
Freelancing gets a bad reputation because of its infamous feast-and-famine cycles that can make even the most resilient among us feel anxious. One way to not only survive, but thrive is to build repeatable, scalable systems that position you as the unequivocal expert in your field.
Last December, I lost a steady client that brought in about 10 percent of my income. In February, another client went through restructuring. As a result, my point of contact got fired, and I lost another 40 percent of my income. Within two months, half my income was gone. While I did win some new clients in that period, the initial panic frightened me.
Once the things settled, I decided I never wanted to experience sudden financial precarity again. In my work as a content marketer, I spend hours advising clients on their content strategy and positioning, but I was too busy with client work to apply my skills to my own business. After my scare, I decided it was time to change that and my prioritize myself.
Join me in my media production kitchen
By Wyatt Coday
For content creators, it can be a struggle juggling multiple content streams at once. Turns out there’s a lot we can borrow from the restaurant industry to create efficient production pipelines of our own.
Months after quitting my job to pursue full-time self-employment, I'm dreaming of working less. I'm a skeptic when it comes to productivity culture, especially when we're talking about meaningless scaling and infinite apps promising to squeeze gold out of immaterial time.
But as a business owner who pays for premium health insurance out of pocket, has a professional practice that requires some powerful but expensive equipment, and desperately needs more vacationing, I'm always toying with efficiency hacks. Recently, I've found that getting things done in a timely manner might be simpler than I thought.
My solopreneur art and media business involves attracting new audiences via my newsletter, but my content production workflow usually bottlenecks whenever I try to add a large, lucrative, and meaningful project to the mix. Since these expansive projects provide a sizable amount of my income, I end up having to balance my regular content production with the demanding research and community-driven programming I'm developing on the fly. My clients are primarily artists who are similarly working alone and trying to stabilize their creative business.
Enter large-batch cooking.
In case you missed it...
Deborah Carver
Tina Morgan
Deborah Carver
The Content Technologist: Content Pros Update is compiled by Deborah Carver, founder and publisher of The Content Technologist, and Digital Production Assistant M.E. Gray.
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