this is justwebcontent.com

If the findings of a new US report are true, then content editors are going to need to rethink their news values.

For it seems that while hardened journalists are insisting that the headlines should be concentrating on Iraq, the world financial crisis and the debate about immigration, what web users are REALLY interested in is Britney Spears, the rise of Nintendo and the release of the iPhone.

Tom Rosenstiel, who helped to write the report for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, told the BBC …

“Users gravitated towards more eclectic stories. There was a sense that users sifting through a lot of raw information; rumour, gossip, propaganda and the news were all throw into the mix.”

The study compared headline news in nearly 50 mainstream news sources, including TV, radio and online, to that of three user-driven news sites. Seventy per cent of stories selected by Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us came from blogs or non-news websites with only 5% of stories overlapping with the top 10 stories in the mainstream media.

The question is what does this really mean for content? Is all that journalistic training and experience for nought?

Firstly, Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us (and StumbleUpon and the rest) are favourite haunts of a tech generation, just the sort of people fascinated by the Wii or the iPhone or Britney so the comparison with sites like TIME.com is not a direct one.

Second, the people who use Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us et al are more likely looking for something light-hearted and off-beat. The Age of Citizen Journalism is here: there is plenty being said on blogs and news-you-can-use sites, and as election year dawns in the US the level of comment will only increase.

Actually, the researchers found traditional news outlets like TIME.com accounted for one in four stories on the user news sites and less than one in a 100 were actually original.

“That suggests that people are re-aggregating the news in the style of citizen editors rather than journalists,” Rosenstiel told BBC news. “These sites offer people a different take on the news but it doesn’t mean that traditional journalism has become irrelevant. They are forming more of secondary conversation about the news.”

So newsmen and women shouldn’t be reaching for their pink slips just yet. The new citizen journalist is more likely a citizen commentator, or just someone sharing their opinion over a few beers (but possibly without the beers).

For content professionals there is a silver lining. All this talk implies that there is an unquenchable thirst for something interesting on the web. All you have to do now is cater to that thirst!

I discovered an interesting post on SEO Blog spidersecret.com the other day, although it dates back to July 24.

Headed “So what if you give most of it away?: The Bikini Concept“, it discusses the thorny question of free content in an original way.

Put simply, a bikini displays almost all the vital assets of a beautiful girl (or an even an ugly one) yet despite this giveaway concept, it remains more exciting than a less revealing one-piece exactly because of what it doesn’t show.

Lure on a G-String

It’s easy to apply this to content. Give almost nothing away and your reader is likely to become frustrated and drift off. But the more you give the deeper he or she is likely to go. Draw them in far enough and they are more likely to buy the bits they cannot see because they can see the quality that’s on offer.

However, there are differences too. Unlike the bikini, there is scope to hide more content than you reveal and still achieve the same results, as long as what is on show is of the highest standard. The issue is having enough quality content to show to all comers.

The Bikini in Action

Once again the message is to create as much quality content as possible: write often and write soon.

I’m often asked why I produce this site when all I’m doing is giving away content trade secrets for nothing! The reality is that all this site will practically achieve is to whet the appetite of people needing content answers. When they appreciate just how much I know about the subject, they are more likely to ask for a private opinion on how their website could be made better. The bikini effect in action.

And that’s just as well, because it’s probably the only time I’ll experience the bikini effect myself!

I’m still amazed at the number of people who ask for a “splash page” on their site: preferably something with lots of animated gifs “because they look nice”.

It’s become almost a mantra with me that home pages must provide a reason for the visitor to come back. (Actually, all pages should give the visitor a reason to come back because it’s just as likely that they’ll parachute in as a result of a link from StumbleUpon or Facebook or some search engine.) So your homepage should feature fresh content, perhaps even some random call to action, to keep it interesting.

This was all confirmed by a reread of Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. And then it dawned on me as I looked over the homepage of this very site, it too was a splash page. One visit was enough to know everything it said and there was precious little novelty: no reason to come back.

Needless to say, I’ve begun a rewrite of the JWC home page. There’s still some way to go — I will be adding some live updated content in the form of RSS too — but there’s certainly lessons to be learned.

They include:

• Never be afraid to re-examine your content
• Never be complacent about your site, and
• Take your own good advice

Good Lessons

Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, but almost all of it is still relevant. I’ll be regurgitating much of it in the coming weeks, with some more up to date insights of my own.

But usability is a vital part of good SEO and you neglect it at your peril. It’s not just a question of hard-to-use web sites not being “sticky” (actually, studies show that people will persevere with an inaccessible website because they fear the alternative won’t be much better), a usable site makes for better SEO because it is attractive to humans and robots.