i don't know much about your situation, so it's difficult to give totally relevant advice. for example, in-house/agency/freelance each put you in a totally different situation. here are 5 general ideas though:

1. show them examples of the good copy you've produced given time vs some of the rushed copy.
2. do some A/B testing: use a survey, web analytics, or a series of straightforward usability interviews to prove that your 'good copy' works better than your 'rushed copy'.
3. you imply that usability is high up in your web development process priorities. copy is a massive part of usability. even if you don't do the testing (as above), explain copy's place in usability & get yourself in at an earlier stage of projects through that.
4. same as above with search engines. seo is a hot topic - explain the search engine implications of copy & get yourself in at an earlier phase of projects.
5. forget about complaining that nobody's listening & change your business processes so that they have to listen. set some SLAs so that if they don't give you enough time, they get their copy later, or have to pay a higher fee.

Keywords attract search engines and quality attracts readers.

With IE7 due to launch imminently your content will be even more important for selling your product or service.

SEO is no longer an initial technical method but an ongoing 'organic' strategy. Google and Yahoo's business relies on their ability to provide the most relevant, up-to-date information. Consequently the websites with the most updated, key word rich content are the ones pushed to the top of the rankings. If you want to optimise your web presence for search then starting a blog is regarded as the best method of achieving this. If your content is of value to readers then it can also develop the sales process by building trust and confidence over time.

Blogs and RSS haven't yet penetrated the mass market due to lack of awareness and its inaccessibility to the non web savvy. Internet Explorer 7 is due to launch imminently and has an RSS button (as with Firefox) which lights up and makes a sound if your site provides a news feed. When visitors start clicking on this button instead of bookmarking sites then having a regularly updated news feed will become an intrinsic part of selling your product or service.

Your content is the most important aspect of any website because it can 'organically' optimise it for search  as well as develop the sales process with potential customers long after they have left.

There are many other points I could raise on the importance of your content but please can I direct you to my website (thewritewords.me.uk/blog) as this should tell you everything you need to know. Feel free to email me if you have any further questions.

This is all great stuff. But moving onto internal matters - I'm finding it a challenge to convince Producers / Project Managers of the importance of content.

With design or HTML build, PMs et al studiously commit to schedules etc. but when it comes to content, we still get an email two hours before asking for 'a paragraph or two' on such and such a topic. It's normally a one sentence brief.

I return these requests with a call for further information, but it highlights an ongoing problem. Because content is 'just words' to most PMs, we often get left till last in the loop. It's demotivating and content staff can feel de-skilled.

I guess I'm looking for 'me too'  replies here guys. Am I alone in experiencing this?

On 06:35:54 11 October 2006 MarkRogers wrote:

The ROI on quality content has been proven time and again.  What gave Amazon the edge over the other book retailers which dominated the market at the time of its launch?  User reviews.  The reviews created not just an additional value over and above the book index, but a community based on the choices expressed.

When we visit large companies we notice that their receptions sometimes offer visitors glossy customer magazines containing high quality editorial.  An example might be a pensions company whose house magazine features a famous chat show host highlighting his pension choices.  The company might mail such a publication to their customers.  They realise the value of such content in direct customer communication.  But articles like this (and the chance to comment on them) are absent from their websites.  The result is that there is little reason for their website to generate organic, contextual links from stakeholders in the topic (pensions), who might be consumer champions, journalists, IFAs or even official bodies dealing with regulation.  The company has an opportunity in their key topic (e.g. stakeholder pensions) to use contextual links to build strong positions on Google in relevant searches.  Instead the company has to pay millions of pounds a year for the clicks they seek on Google and in less well-targeted banner ads. 

If the company in question repurposed existing editorial for online (thinking about keywords, about links and about community) they would save a huge budget out of their banner and paid click budgets.  Some unpublished internal work of ours at Market Sentinel shows that carefully targeted editorial costing £10,000 (mostly below the line), combined with a proactive linking strategy has returned so far returned traffic equivalent to a paid search campaign which would have cost an estimated £25,000 (above the line).  Hitwise's recent studies show that the best commercial sites using paid search nevertheless generate most of their traffic organically.  The ROI on high quality content is that traffic.  The place to go asking for your budgets is marketing, particularly word of mouth marketing.

If you are looking for case studies check out Intuit's work.  (Full disclosure: they are customers of ours).  Their business is accountancy software.  What they are doing at www.jumpup.com is to create general resources and community for small businesses.   QED.

Again, I agree with danielb.

I think anyone who is passionate about what they do and works for an agency where they are multiple disciplines in play (and it sounds like you do) have suffered the same problem, probably on multiple occasions.

Working in an agency is a bunfight at best ;o) (having done 8 or so years I know it well...)

Why not take 5 mins out, relax...
Then think clearly about the outcome you want to achieve.
Write that down.
Then think very clearly about the first step *you* can take.
Do it, see how that feels, and then work out the next step.

Come back to the forum in a week's time and tell us all how it went.

The worthwhile message I want you to take out of this post is - don't waste your time on here drumming up moral support, that's not going to help you move forward.

At the end of the day, *you* need to get on with it!

DJ

On 10:51:45 11 October 2006 kenobi wrote:

This is all great stuff. But moving onto internal matters - I'm finding it a challenge to convince Producers / Project Managers of the importance of content.

With design or HTML build, PMs et al studiously commit to schedules etc. but when it comes to content, we still get an email two hours before asking for 'a paragraph or two' on such and such a topic. It's normally a one sentence brief.

I return these requests with a call for further information, but it highlights an ongoing problem. Because content is 'just words' to most PMs, we often get left till last in the loop. It's demotivating and content staff can feel de-skilled.

I guess I'm looking for 'me too'  replies here guys. Am I alone in experiencing this?

On 06:35:54 11 October 2006 MarkRogers wrote:

The ROI on quality content has been proven time and again.  What gave Amazon the edge over the other book retailers which dominated the market at the time of its launch?  User reviews.  The reviews created not just an additional value over and above the book index, but a community based on the choices expressed.

When we visit large companies we notice that their receptions sometimes offer visitors glossy customer magazines containing high quality editorial.  An example might be a pensions company whose house magazine features a famous chat show host highlighting his pension choices.  The company might mail such a publication to their customers.  They realise the value of such content in direct customer communication.  But articles like this (and the chance to comment on them) are absent from their websites.  The result is that there is little reason for their website to generate organic, contextual links from stakeholders in the topic (pensions), who might be consumer champions, journalists, IFAs or even official bodies dealing with regulation.  The company has an opportunity in their key topic (e.g. stakeholder pensions) to use contextual links to build strong positions on Google in relevant searches.  Instead the company has to pay millions of pounds a year for the clicks they seek on Google and in less well-targeted banner ads. 

If the company in question repurposed existing editorial for online (thinking about keywords, about links and about community) they would save a huge budget out of their banner and paid click budgets.  Some unpublished internal work of ours at Market Sentinel shows that carefully targeted editorial costing £10,000 (mostly below the line), combined with a proactive linking strategy has returned so far returned traffic equivalent to a paid search campaign which would have cost an estimated £25,000 (above the line).  Hitwise's recent studies show that the best commercial sites using paid search nevertheless generate most of their traffic organically.  The ROI on high quality content is that traffic.  The place to go asking for your budgets is marketing, particularly word of mouth marketing.

If you are looking for case studies check out Intuit's work.  (Full disclosure: they are customers of ours).  Their business is accountancy software.  What they are doing at www.jumpup.com is to create general resources and community for small businesses.   QED.