Online Content Confessions of an Ex-Parrot

One of the (many) things I was not prepared for when I started teaching at KU was my students’ tendency to mimicry. When they turned in the first assignment of the year, I typically had a dozen or more that were quoting back to me, typically in a very poor paraphrase, what I had said in class. Apparently, they were under the impression that a successful essay would make the same arguments I made in class, using the same evidence, with no original insight. I called this tendency “Demented Parrot Syndrome,” because that’s what their essays sounded like, a bunch of squawking parrots that couldn’t contribute anything original to the conversation.

Believe me, I tried hard to head this off when I assigned the first paper, both in the written assignment and in my descriptions of what I was looking for, but no matter how hard I tried, it seemed that some students always turned in papers just mimicking classroom discussions. Most of them learned by the end of the semester that they had their own voices, and that they did better when they expressed their own ideas powerfully.

Many Online Content Providers Are Parrots

Apparently, nobody taught this lesson to many writers of online content. If you read much content that’s out there, you may be as shocked as I am at how  much of it is simple paraphrases of something somebody else wrote or a brief comment with a link that contains all the information the article promised. Worse, most of the time the paraphrased article is inferior to the original.

I don’t really blame them–it’s probably how they were trained. It’s how I was trained to write online content, and it’s a view that many firms hold about online content: if it’s not word-for-word identical, then it’s original enough. Personally, I can’t stand that approach, so when I work on any writing project, I strive to make it genuinely original.

My approach to writing makes content more trustworthy, which increases conversions and improves SEO performance.

My Approach to Creating Truly Original Content

Multiple Sources

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that if your content has only one source, it’s tantamount to plagiarism. Personally, I never write content with fewer than three sources, and often consult dozens of sources when writing content. Writing from more than one source automatically enriches the content because of the dynamic interplay of ideas between sources.

You can look at this white paper 4 keys to healthy weight loss I wrote for a weight loss clinic to get an idea of my research emphasis. Believe me, the sources I cite are actually only a fraction of the sources I consulted.

Finding Authority Sources

In addition to only using one source, many online writers choose very poor sources. For example, they will work from a newspaper article about a scientific study, or, worse, just take another online article’s research at face value. This is unacceptable, and it’s not the way I work, and here’s an example how this approach can get you into trouble.

Recently, I was asked to write a blog about fatigued driving and truck accidents. In doing my research, I found an article claiming that “30% – 40% of accidents involving heavy trucks are caused by driver sleepiness.” Being familiar with the FMCSA’s Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS), I was dubious. The LTCCS figure puts fatigue as a “contributing cause” in about 13% of truck accidents. The article didn’t provide a source, but I tracked down their figure to an NTSB letter that contains this language: “Research has suggested that truckdriver fatigue may be a contributing factor in as many as 30 to 40 percent of all heavy truck accidents.” Note how the parroting has changed the meaning of the NTSB statement. By rephrasing, they have misconstrued the truth of the research.

The NTSB letter does give a further source, so I consulted it. Most research in the source suggests a rate of 3-4%, but there are two studies that might potentially justify the claim. One study showed that fatigue contributed to 41% of accidents, but in that study “The principal criterion for the determination of the presence of driver fatigue was designated to be the primary cause if the driver had been on duty for more than 15 consecutive hours.” In other words, they didn’t know the drivers were fatigued, just suspected based on the time on duty. In the other study, “Fatigue was judged to be a principle causal factor in 57 (31 percent) of the 182 crashes.” But, the study only looked at crashes that were fatal to the truck driver, which are a small fraction (13%) of all crashes and, “The Safety Board cautioned against overgeneralizing the findings of this study.”

Perform Original Calculations

Sometimes, even authority sources don’t have the information you’re looking for, and then it becomes time to perform original calculations. For a website on the value of jury trials, I extrapolated the possible number of lives saved by car safety innovations inspired by lawsuits. I took the number of traffic deaths per vehicle mile traveled in 1965, the year that courts decided auto manufacturers had a duty to make their cars safer, and multiplied that by the number of vehicle miles traveled in 2010.

Also, for this infographic I performed a number of calculations, including converting the kinetic energy in a speeding semi into the equivalent kinetic energy in AR-15 rounds. (I also calculated the equivalent figure in how many light bulbs it could light for an hour, how much water could be pumped from a well of average depth, and armor-piercing anti-tank shells’ kinetic energy, though the designer opted not to use them.)

Provide Personal Insight

I also approach my writing with the goal of creating a compelling perspective on the subject. Consider, for example, this juxtaposition of Invisalign as a computer-age technology against braces as a railroad-age technology. Or this distinction between breast implant placement as being Marilyn Monroe vs. Jayne Mansfield.

The goal is always to create something that is unique in its perspective and not just in its words, something that educates, inspires, and persuades.

If you are looking for truly original and truly compelling online content for your website, don’t hire a demented parrot: hire a writer. Please contact WriterMC today to learn how I can help you with your content.