knowledge cloud, flow content, know content, hammock.com customer media and content

©Thinkstock

[This post is part of the series, The Basics of Customer Media and Content. A version of this post previously appeared on the blog of Rex Hammock, RexBlog.com]

There are two kinds of online content* that really matter to customers: 1. Chronological content (or what at Hammock, we call, Flow Content), the type of news and information that keeps us abreast of what’s happening now, real-time, that is of importance to us in our work or personal lives. 2. Contextual content (or what we call, Flow Content), the type of every-green content that provides us the  understanding and knowledge when we need it.

Flow Content: This is the content that’s important because of its time-stamp. It is a never-ending stream and river of news and information that comes when the sender decides we should receive it, not necessarily when we expect or need it. It comes in the form of tweets, updates, email, text-messages, RSS feeds, etc. We can’t live without it. Often, it’s this kind of Flow Content that customers say over-loads them. That makes sense, as it over-loads all of us, especially if we don’t know how to organize it. In that case, we ignore it.

Know Content: This is the content we want when we need it. It provides customers the context, background or missing gaps of knowledge they need like definitions or addresses or how-to do something. It is the kind of content we need when we’re trying to solve a problem or learn the location of something we’ve just heard about on the news. While Wikipedia is a great example of Know Content, our personal favorite is SmallBusiness.com (a project of Hammock).

*This post relates to the online content customers use. There are other things customers use that aren’t content — a shopping cart, for instance.