Father McKenzie, according famously to Lennon and McCartney, was busy "Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear" because "No one comes near."
And so I wonder if it must not be, increasingly, for any number of copywriters? The frequency of requests for content that is quite clearly never intended to be read is growing with abandon.
"Could you write 2000 x 500 word long pages for us about just about anything you like so long as it's to do with fish?" is now a fairly typical request.
Of course the sole point of such copy is that it should cast a fine enough search-term net beneath the trawler of the commissioning website that absolutely any search, however improbable, swims into it.
Now the rationale is OK.
It's just that I can't think of anything more soul destroying than writing 2000 items in the knowledge that the chance of any of them ever being read for longer than it takes to click to a more relevant page is virtually nil.
New to this site, which is why this comment is late. On writing the words no one will hear - the problem is the word 'content'. Webby people seem to think like designers did a zillion years ago - they used to ask the copywriter to just fill those grey lines please. Thankfully most designers I work with now involve the copywriter right at the beginning. But many webby people still see words as just 'content'.Meaningless junk. I guess the trick is to write stuff that is really interesting ( and relevant). then Mr Webby gets really freaked out when people say how much they enjoyed READING his web site.
Posted by: will atkinson | Saturday, 14 June 2008 at 12:09 PM
lovely piece of writing and a good point! :)
Posted by: Rebecca | Sunday, 18 May 2008 at 05:49 PM