Reader-Centric Writing for a Prosumer Market: Effectively Using Professional Writers to Create and Maintain Content and Metadata in Digital Media

Abstract

In the creation of online marketing sites, it is common for the site to be well underway before any writers are introduced to the project. Sometimes writers are not introduced to the project until the site is actually designed and developed, the writer expected to add content after the fact and to an alien architecture. In the case of complex information systems, sometimes no writer is involved at all. In this chapter, the authors do three things. First, they make the claim that there are three kinds of writing demanded by the Internet: user-centric, persuasion-centric, and quality-centric. Together, they make up a package called “reader-centric writing.” Furthermore, the authors suggest that in writing for the prosumer, quality-centric and persuasion-centric are as common and perhaps more important than user-centric, and a competent professional writer thoroughly immersed in the skills necessary for producing the full spectrum of reader-centric writing should be involved in the production of these texts from the very beginning of the project. Secondly, toward supporting the above argument, the authors present examples in Complex and Complicated Information Systems (CCISs) where developers with an incomplete understanding of the issues discussed produce egregious problems that go unnoticed for years. Finally, based on the above claims, the authors show how excellent writers are in position to make valuable contributions to content quality, metadata quality, landing page optimization, search engine optimization, and return on investment, particularly when producing Websites for audiences as demanding as prosumers.