As a joke for my dear hubby’s upcoming 50th birthday, I got him a membership to AARP. Consequently, we’re now recipients of AARP The Magazine.

And I have to say that I’m impressed.

I’m savoring our first issue because it’s packed full of so much interesting information, advice and humor. My favorite piece (to date) is a mock-interview piece with Stump, a 10-year-old Sussex Spaniel who is the oldest dog to win “Best in Show” at  the Westminster dog show. Hysterical interview.

So as a writer enthralled with a magazine “written for old people” I had to pause and wonder what gives.

What “gives” is that the editors of AARP The Magazine understand relevant content. I’ve talked about relevant content a lot here. I talk about it workshops and with my clients. Other people, of course, talk about relevancy, too. Because it’s so important.

Yet there are still people who understand the need for relevant content but don’t know how to make it happen.

So I’m going to embark on a series of blog posts that discuss relevancy in much more detail.

Let’s start with a definition of the word “relevant.” Unfortunately, the dictionary definition does little to help and much more to confuse:

“having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand; affording evidence tending to prove or disprove the matter at issue or under discussion”

Yikes!

Perhaps a better definition is this: Relevant content is/are the text, images, audio, video, graphics, animations, data, PDFs, documents and posts that are meaningful, memorable and useful.

Enough for now. In my upcoming posts, I’ll discuss each of those in detail as they pertain to text, which I call copy, as well as talk about how relevancy is, well, relative.

Until then, start watching for the things that grab your personal attention. Set them aside for now; we’ll use them to fuel future discussions.

Possibly related posts

• The Search for Relevant Content – Part 2 (0)
• The Search for Relevant Content – Part 5 (0)
• How to write visually (0)