Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Do it: Context is king

Published on 20/02/08
by Zac Echola

If there’s one thing I hate about newspaper writing it’s that we spend so much space repeating what we’ve already written.

If there’s two things I hate about newspaper writing it’s that we don’t spend enough space explaining what we’ve already written about.

We too often have a case of too much or too little.

This is why tagging your content matters so much.

I know it’s a simple thing, we see these little guys all the time on the Web, except on many news sites. It needs to be the top priority for your editorial strategies.

When you write a story about X subject and then follow up on X subject repeatedly, it’s incredibly useful for your readers to easily follow the history of the story or find related content. Those tags, not repeating paragraphs, add breadth to your content.

We still think in terms of sections as buckets. You have a news bucket and a business bucket and a lifestyle bucket and we cram content into one of those buckets, no matter how ambiguous the story may be. What if you have an article about the iPhone? It could fit in all three buckets. Plus a technology bucket, plus a bucket specifically for Apple, Inc. Tagging allows you put one piece of content into many buckets.

News has a short shelf life. Tagging every piece of content gives those older pieces new life, in context of the broader picture. It turns every article page into a targeted mini-homepage. It uses the power of databases to aid in relevant serendipity, meaning your users find extra information based on their interests that led them to that original item.

This seems so incredibly simple, so why don’t more news sites do it? Why are we still stuck thinking in terms of traditional section buckets?

The end. Or is it?

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