There's nothing inherently wrong with the word "content." For one thing, the word has multiple senses and uses. I am content with having only ranch or vinaigrette to choose from among salad dressings (because at least I have the vinaigrette). I appreciate a useful table of contents. Nothing wrong with "content" so far.
But using "content" to stand for "meaning" or "text" or "information," for example, drives me nuts. This is a personal problem, I realize, and fundamentally it's a knee-jerk reaction to something that's different from what I've experienced in the past. That said, I'm going to vent my spleen against "content" and try to articulate why I think we ought to avoid what I think are its most obnoxious uses.
So You Want to Write Marketing Copy, er, "Content"
In marketing and business, it's important to be first. I get it. That's part of the motivation for neologisms that come from these sectors: You coin a term, it takes off, it gets used in a million hashtags, and your ad team and/or (ideally) whatever product or service you're advertising is the new hot stuff. I think this need to be first is part of what drives the innovative use of words in ways that don't conform with the ways they used to be used. It's why "gifting" is alright as a verb and "grow your business" has taken the place of "increase the amount of business you're doing": it's a new and unusual way to use a word (in these cases, turning a noun into a verb and vice versa). If you're part of the "in" crowd in marketing, you'll be able to speak the language, and the shibboleths change regularly. "Content" is one such marker, as are terms like "marketing collateral," "friction," and "storyscaping." If you can use these words in a sentence in front of a large room of people who work in marketing without checking the faces of the audience to make sure that what you said made sense, consider yourself already part of their priesthood.
When I first started hearing "content" in the context of marketing a few years ago, I had to stop to process the word's meaning. It was simply so different from what I was used to. Over the years, as I heard about "content generation," "content marketing," "content mapping," etc., etc., I did not become inured to what what to me was a strange usage. I became increasingly irritated by it. To me, "content" means something along the lines of "stuff within a container," not "writing" or "text."
Why "Content"?
There's an easy explanation for why we might use the word "content" to stand for what it usually stands for in marketing, which could include but is not limited to writing, text, information, graphics, art, certain types of documents/texts (e.g., blog posts, whitepapers, emails, flyers, tweets), and ideas. In other words, "content" sometimes stands for the ideas themselves and sometimes for the media through which those ideas are communicated.
Note the wording I used there: the media through which ideas are communicated. I actually wrote "the media in which those ideas are communicated" and erased it (rather: deleted it). There a few common metaphors for writing that are well-studied in the field of rhetoric and composition, and two of the best-known such metaphors are the "container metaphor" and the "conduit metaphor." Both are represented in my changed sentences: the container metaphor is apparent if I write something like "the media in which ideas are communicated," while the conduit metaphor is used in a phrase like "the media through which ideas are communicated." Both metaphors are perfectly natural, because we regularly take abstract ideas -- like the notion of communication -- and talk about them as if they were physical things -- like a pneumatic tube that can serve as a conduit from my mind to yours, or a box that I can place something in and then hand to you -- which makes it easier to talk about those abstractions. Happens all the time. Nothing inherently wrong with using a metaphor to help you communicate.
I won't rehash what Philip Eubanks has said well about the pros and cons of the conduit metaphor (you can read it for yourself if you're lucky enough to have access to College Composition and Communication vol. 53 no. 1), and I'll only touch on what Darsie Bowden wrote many years ago (1993) about the container metaphor here (CCC vol. 44 no. 3). Essentially, Bowden says that while the container metaphor makes sense, according to metaphor theory, and while it can be useful, if we use it without maintaining a critical awareness of its limitations, we might be eliding some important aspects of communication. In short, we end up thinking that communication is just a thing in a box, and we risk thinking that the value of the communication is in the fact of its existence, not in the actual ideas being communicated or the means by which they are communicated.
I'll quote her extensively here in a moment, but first, think about your Twitter feed, especially if you don't use lists to help separate the wheat (the accounts that provide links to original, useful, timely information) from the chaff (accounts that post rehashed retweets of marginally interesting posts that are really just there for the sake of posting and, perhaps, catching one more person's attention, getting one more retweet, or gaining some sort of attention of questionable significance and value). "Content" there can really be a massive waste of time, space, and energy, content for the sake of content, not communication.
Here's a quote from Bowden's article:
When students are encouraged to "pour" what is in their heads onto paper, they are being encouraged to view not only the text as a container but the mind as well. More importantly, they are being asked to subscribe to a view of knowledge that enables its transfer from one container to another (from mind to text). Within the container schema, knowledge becomes a commodity that can be transferred from mind to paper. Once transferred and "contained," knowledge then acquires a character of locatability, which enables it to exist-conceptually, at least-both within the mind and within a paper. Knowledge becomes static and decontextualized. It can exist within a paper or inside a person's head and have little or nothing to do with the social and historical world outside.
In other words, "content" can quickly become devoid of value. How many tweets have you seen that have been retweeted from six degrees of separation from the original post, and the article linked was published five years ago and is only of marginal relevance? That's what Bowden refers to here.
If Not "Content," What?
A modest proposal: Instead of "content," let's start getting specific. I don't say that I'm a "content-generator." I say I'm a writer and editor. My friends who are "content managers" are, more accurately, brand managers who specialize in communicating in a variety of media, through language and graphics, to many different audiences. My sub-contractors who write "content" are, in fact, writing articles, blog posts, resumes, cover letters, websites, etc.
And here's why getting specific is important: When we get specific about what we do, it's easier to command respect for it. I'm not just generating content that can be put into a box and shipped off to wherever. I'm not FedEx, and neither are the many documents that I write and edit. What I do takes expertise and specialization, even if it's writing clickbait (try writing a clickbait article yourself and see how difficult it is; it's far easier for someone with training in rhetoric and genre theory, I promise you). What my sub-contractors do takes flair, creativity, and time. My friends who work in graphic design and video production don't just make content that's easily consumed and passed by (through?); they're working with art that affects some of the most deeply-recessed parts of our human cognitive processing of communication and emotion that we have trouble describing what their work does to us.
Getting specific about what we're doing when we're "generating content" may help us start thinking about what exactly is valuable about the communication that we're generating and sharing. If I say that I'm writing a blog post, that triggers the concept of "blog post" in the mind of whoever I'm talking to; suddenly, standards and expectations are part of the mix. "Content," however, is so vague that it's functionally devoid of standards and expectations. It simply is whatever I say it is. There's freedom in that, but there's also an easy way to side-step having to meet, let alone confront or raise or change, expectations. If we start getting specific -- saying "I create customer-testimonial videos and other graphics for online marketing campaigns" instead of "I create content for online marketing campaigns" -- we might encourage ourselves to be sure that what we're creating is worth its description. It's a bridge too far, perhaps, for me to say "And this might lead to fewer phatic retweets of ancient articles that contribute nothing new or original to any worthwhile conversation," but a girl can hope, right?
Regardless, increased specificity is rarely harmful. For the next week or so, if you find yourself saying "content," stop and ask yourself what you mean by that word. Try substituting in something more specific. It will be hard at first and will take more time and words. But it might be worth it, especially if you're describing your own work.