In my two years as a content manager, my earlier suspicions have only been confirmed: even though I like content, and I know a bit about marketing, the two put together don’t make a content marketer. For that I’m just too much of a ‘content’ person. If I hadn’t been, I might have called this blog ‘marketingrambler’ and found myself rambling about the connection between marketing and gardening. Hmm. That doesn’t really work for me at all. Content gardening, however, has made it into my blog several time.

On to another topic: that of the connection between communication and information. Or really content, communication, and information.

• Communication without information is … well, answers tend to range from impossible to politics to smalltalk I suppose.
• Information without communication is just stuff sitting on a shelf.

Information is basically what people communicate. They might steer away from sharing one bit of information and convey another bit, but not communicating anything is… erm, the result of true dedication?

So basically, we communicate in order to transfer information from A to B. I think I saw something like that in a book about communication once.

And that means a communications professional views both communication and information from a very different angle than an information professional. (which is my preferred angle, whenever I get to it).

Communications teams may view communication as part of a project. However information professionals look at the transfer of information as part of a process within the organisation. When faced with tasks resembling those of communication professionals, they’ll probably view the project at hand as a process, wonder where information should enter the process, and where the process results in new information. And although information professionals are able to ‘do communication’, their hands will probably itch to improve and streamline the process, define all the information gaps, get some governance on the whole thing, …

In short, they’ll want to make structural changes whereas communication professionals will probably focus on the stuff that needs doing for that particular project.

Just my thoughts on a Friday (evening…). I’m getting seriously distracted by Gardeners’ World now, so more next time. Meanwhile, any thoughts on communication, content, or information? If so, just let me know in the comments section (or possibly Twitter).