At my first job, covering the police beat in St. Petersburg, Florida, I used a typewriter when I was in the office. But most days, I cruised the streets listening to the police radio and rushing to the scene of robberies, shootings or drownings, where I dictated eyewitness accounts over the phone to an editor. Later, at the Wall Street Journal bureau in Dallas, we filed our reporting electronically after first passing it through the Bureau Chief, who was a stickler for precise language and error-free copy. Both these experiences taught me the importance of choosing the right word or phrase and envisioning how a sentence or paragraph would look once it got in print. When I began writing speeches for executives at Kroger, I quickly had to adopt a new skill: writing for the ear; that is, composing a conversation.

These days, content creation most often is targeted for online audiences, and it relies upon speed and brevity. If you don’t capture someone’s attention within seconds, you might as well not have even tried. Websites, blog posts, and other content portals are churning out millions upon millions of words per minute, creating an information cascade. And more and more, content has become pictures, images and video.

What is often lost in this rapid dissemination of unfiltered content is background, perspective, and meaning. For those wishing to build and maintain a coordinated, seamless profile or “brand” — coordinating content across all media platforms — is a daunting task. Being heard or seen, going viral, standing out is an endless challenge.

Organizations and individuals wishing to be heard in this fast-changing media landscape need a guide.  That’s where I can put my 40+ years as a professional communicator to my clients’ use. In that time, I’ve participated in many of the changes that have so deeply affected the way we communicate.  One thing I’ve learned is that the quality of content — the best way to say or write a thought, capture an image or shoot a video so that it is understood and has impact and influence — counts more than ever.