Constant Content

i would like to try a public request but am a bit uncertain. How do we know what the customer wants? Which direction to take the article? The requests seem so basic. Thanks, Linda Kate

Hey Linda, public requests are up to us to interpret. Sometimes the customer gives us a fairly clear idea, and sometimes they even will mention a website for us to look at to see what they have in mind. But many times the requests are vague, and I think that the people making them are not entirely sure what they want, and they hope that we will come up with some clever ideas.

So go ahead, find some angle that makes sense to you and get your feet wet. You'll feel better once you do - and it's an uphill slog after that. ; )

I think that the vagueness is half the fun. It gives us a little freedom to show our creativity.

Try and think like the customer. He's probably going to put the article on a Web site that sells something. For example, the person requesting articles about "How to create photo calendars using web-based photo calendar services" quite possibly operates such a service. In that case, you'd want to write an article that illustrates how easy these services are to use and how gorgeous the photos look when professionally printed compared to the amatuerish look of using your home computer and printer. Assuming the customer is selling these services, you wouldn't want to name the competition, but write about these services in a general sense. You might talk about the benefits and value that these services offer over struggling to do the job yourself as well as the basic steps you would take regardless of which service you choose (gather photos, upload photos, select clipart/frames, type captions, choose holidays, etc). Who knows if I'm right on this one or not, but that's how I'd approach this particular request. If the customer ends up passing, that's okay too because the article would likely appeal to other customers.