Every once in a while I find this column's deadline looming and I begin to panic because I haven't been able to find a solid topic about which to write. This is one of those times.

I've been writing for a long time and have run into this problem before. I've relied on honed techniques to break my writers block—I'll step away from the computer and relax my mind by taking a walk or pursue other activities.

Sometimes I'll use a brainstorming approach in which I just start listing all sorts of ideas and topics, hoping that when I'm done brainstorming, a theme or idea will pop out at me.

I have to admit that none of these techniques worked for me this time—until I realized how much of a challenge it is to find content for the blogs or social media posts that your agency uses.

Then it dawned on me the best column I could write would be to share some of the “ah-ha” moments I experienced preparing to write this column.

Light bulb moments

Stop thinking about what to write and start thinking about for whom you write. I am not alone writing about how agents can leverage technology to grow their bottom lines.

I have geared my columns to people who aren't necessarily up on the latest techniques, social media platforms or have the skills to simplify business marketing.

I write this column for the agent who doesn't have time to do too much more than the traditional advertising and marketing. You have a website, but probably don't update it that often. You probably don't even think about SEO (search engine optimization) or, if you did, you probably wouldn't know how to improve it.

Maybe you have an agency Facebook page. Most of your posts are about the products and services you offer and link back to a free quote on auto or home insurance.

If you're the agency principal, it's doubtful you are doing any of that work yourself. You probably have a receptionist, CSR or a young relative doing it while they're on holiday from high school or college.

Thanks for inviting me here…

So with that picture in mind, let's realize that it's not about the technology. Making the decision to employ a high school or college kid to update your website, blog or Facebook page means you're focusing too much on the appearance rather than the content.

The two most important questions regarding your website to address are “Is the information easy to find?” and “Is the information about the visitor to your site or about you?”

There are any numbers of websites that are beautiful from an aesthetics perspective, but functionally, it takes forever for you to find something as simple as a phone number. I'll take ugly but functional over beautiful but useless every time.

Second, like writing, your website content needs to be aimed at solving problems for your visitors. If the focus is on your products and services as solutions to their problems, stop fooling yourself: it's still all about you.

How do you define content?

Too often we think of content or information only in terms of word count. Technology has changed this mindset drastically in recent years. More of us are reading online, especially on our mobile devices. As a result, we have shorter attention spans and read only shorter articles.

I'm often taken aback by what amounts to “e-books” these days. Typically, a single space, written page holds about 500 words; a typical ebook page generally consists of 250 words. In addition, what is now referred to as an “article” is often not much more than a couple of paragraphs.

So the scope and depth of our content tends to be less, which means getting our message across is that much more difficult—and why technology has prompted a second change in content development.

A thousand words

Although the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” dates back more than 100 years, it's truer today than ever. In the early 1900s, the point was to get people to visit someplace and “see for themselves,” but now, the “seeing” is brought directly to the reader.

Because you don't have as much space to get your message across, you need to get the most out of the space you do have—and that's where images come into play. Whether it's photos, charts, slideshows or videos, multimedia content is becoming more critical to effectively convey your messages to people in a timeframe they will be able to absorb.

I would like to share with you a Pecha Kucha presentation I created for my local Chamber of Commerce. Pecha Kucha is a Japanese style of presenting slides. In our case, we changed it slightly by limiting the number of slides to just 10, with each on the screen for only 30 seconds, for a total of 5 minutes to get your message across. It proved to be a very difficult but educational exercise on finding that elongated elevator pitch that we all must have.

Check it out at http://bit.ly/1b9diz3 and let me know what you think.

As I continue writing these columns, I will try to develop valuable short videos that will compliment the focus of my message. I'll be using a variety of tools to create and record the videos and I'll share what I used so you can learn about what's out there.

I shot this column's video from my computer using my built-in webcam over a platform called presenterPRO from comF5. It's actually a live streaming platform that allows you to have co-hosts, share slides, documents, screens and other types of content. There are no applets to download or limit to the number of viewers. After the fact, the archive can be viewed anytime. It can be made public or password protected.

Hopefully, if you don't see yourself as the person I described early on, you still were able to find some valuable information here. If not, then maybe next month's column will be written for you. Drop me a note and let me know what's troubling you.

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