Digital Content: Like the Middle Airplane Seat

Returning from a recent trip, a thought occurred to me. All the digital content I work to help clients craft, refine and perfect is much like sitting in the middle airplane seat. You see, I don’t fly as much as some people, but I fly enough as I visit clients in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. When I fly, I prefer the aisle or the window seat. Many people likely have that same preference, which is why the airlines have made most aisle and window seats available at a premium. But on the short flights I often take, even those premium seats are sold out by the time I book.

I won’t address first class fliers here, because you have it much better all the way around with your free drinks and snacks and no middle seats at all.

The middle seat in coach is confined, it’s, well, squished. No one really wants to deal with it. You never know who’s going to be on either side, and these days, you’re almost guaranteed a full flight. Depending on the the airline, if you’re my height of 5'8", or taller, your knees are going to be pushing into the seat in front of you because you can’t turn to either side. Sound like your digital content yet?

As you wait for your boarding group to be called, you eye the other passengers waiting in line and secretly hope for this one — not for that one — to be your seat mate.

Now to my point.

Why is digital content like that?

Digital content is constrained by many factors. At first glance, you could draw the conclusion that content — your words, images and any other assets on the page — are limited by technology. That is just the first hurdle. What can and can’t be done? How will the elements fit together?

Consider technology as the person that’s sitting to the left, in the window seat. They can see what’s coming. They can stretch out or lean to one side, making the best use of the tools for the content at hand. Technology, of course has limitations, but with the right developers, just about anything can be done. These people can make things happen. Oh, of course they are limited by time and money. And those limitations translate into do’s and do not’s in site content.

To your right, on the aisle seat, you have resources. Resources like time, money and qualified people, play a role in how much and what type of content you can create. That aisle seat is usually not as full as you want it to be, unlike on the real airplane. There are typically not enough people or too short a deadline to do those great things you can imagine. If you have a big budget for time and resources dedicated to your content, you’re lucky. You’re one of very few. Even the big brands I’ve worked with rarely have the budgets for individual projects you might imagine. Most have to make do with less, and many don’t even budget for content development. In a way, it results in the best creativity, but sometimes the path can be pretty bumpy (yes, turbulence, I’ve experienced some degree of it on just about every web project).

As you continue on your journey in your middle seat, you have politics closing in like the seat in front of you that gets reclined directly into your lap. Your knees are always bumping into this guy. It’s not pleasant. One group wants to have more of their content on the site than another. It’s not necessarily dictated by what the audience wants or needs. Content direction can instead be dictated by those who have more power in the organization.

As a content strategist, one of my jobs is to reduce the impact of this limiting factor every day, trying to keep the customer experience front and center. On the plane, you just wait for the tray tables up, seat backs up announcement so you can breathe again.

And finally, behind you (in an ideal, not so metaphorical way), kicking you (your seat, if you will) every once in a while, are your competitors. They’ve found a way to do things faster or cheaper. Or they just look cooler than you.

Somehow, you still take the flight in that middle seat, and you even thrive there, just like your content will. You still make it to your destination and you’ll inevitably take that seat again rather than not flying at all. The trip is too much fun to skip altogether.