the view from Airport Rd | Kucia And Associates Blog

We were thinking and talking (simultaneously) the other day about what it takes to build a meaningful web presence. What I heard then and have consistently heard for many years is this: good content. Said one friend with 11 years of site-building experience, “The content, especially the copy, is always the problem… always holding things up.” Kind of like, “the dinner wasn’t very good until the food was served.” Sounds obvious enough, until you witness what must really be happening in the site development process. The functional, designed shell of a web site is in the control of the designer and his/her many guides and helpers, including clients, strategic thinkers and just about anyone else. How the site looks and links and engages and interacts with the visitor is the designer/programmer’s responsibility. Their work is critical. But deciding and delivering on what a site actually needs to say or present to the visitor is the bothersome “content” part. Regarding copy, designers rightfully advise to “keep it brief,” because no one likes to read a lot, especially designers. SEO experts advise how to write for the search engines. Never mind that the search engines aren’t your customer – they know what your customer wants – the search engines work for your customer, delivering just what your helplessly searching customer wants and needs. But eventually something meaningful needs to be said or otherwise conveyed with lasting value to someone else – the search engines’ boss – the customer. Fortunately there are forward thinking, talented, technologically advanced people working on ways to convey messages through combinations of words, images, video, audio design, music, graphic design and more, all mashed up together in unique and very appealing ways that home videos and phone cameras cannot match. This is where online and web site “content” are going — fast. Hardware and bandwidth technologies are accommodating it, swinging open the doors on what will constitute and perform commercially as great content. One group we know who is doing this is a start-up based here in Cincinnati – Today Cincinnati Productions, LLC. The core partnership is a team of CCM (UC College Conservatory of Music) graduates with degrees in Electronic Media. They describe themselves as “a multi-faceted company that specializes in the production and distribution of electronic media, formed to assist local artists by hosting original content and creating a new outlet for distributing art.” This art will soon be making its way, very far and wide, online. Paying respect to their company’s namesake community, and what great things it offers right now – today – the group wrote, performed and produced this musical video, entitled “Today,” utilizing scenic park settings throughout Greater Cincinnati.