09 Jun The Content Conundrum; Quantity or Quality?
There’s no doubt that in when it comes to building a brand, reputation and credibility, content is King and what you publish can affect whether your business will make you a prince or a pauper. The point of content marketing is to subtly catch a customer’s eye, beckoning them in through the creation of blogs, articles, social media posts etc., rather than a direct marketing offensive. Content marketing should genuinely inspire interest in your products and services, encouraging the organic promotion of your brand through spontaneous shares of content that people actually want to read.
However, the dogma of content marketing has long been plagued by an almost-impossible question; quality vs. quantity? Not only is this a divisive issue – with groups either firmly in one camp or the other, or dithering and dallying between the two – it’s a seemingly one without a definitive answer.
Here’s our view.
There are those who fall into the quantity camp are staunch supporters of “more is more”, citing the need for frequent publication of posts to drive traffic. Search engines can’t detect whether content is high-quality; they simply analyse how much on-topic or search-related articles are on a website and the higher the number, the higher the rank on the search results. Simple. Plus, with a weighty catalogue of content, visitors can continue clicking through on an endless trail of ‘I’ll-just-read-one-more’ articles and posts.
Momentum is important when curating a dedicated audience of regular readers. If you’ve gained a reputation as a prolific poster, customers will be more inclined to visit your site more often to check for new content. More clicks equal more exposure – a win, surely?
But there’s a caveat; nobody wants to read bad writing. Most companies don’t have the budget to hire hordes of hard-working copywriters to pound out copy, so if there is a solitary soul dashing off three dozen posts a day, chances are that the quality of writing will suffer. Articles don’t have to be Pulitzer Prize worthy every time, but they need to be at least readable and ideally, engaging. That is after all, the purpose of content marketing.
Admittedly, quality can be hard to quantify – it’s largely subjective. So when creating content, it’s important to determine exactly what you want it to do; generate business, increase social media interaction, raise brand awareness etc.
In any case, we’re inclined to advocate that a smaller arsenal of well-crafted words is more effective than barrage of blurb. People are drawn to content that is both relevant and reliable. By establishing yourself as an authority on certain topics, you’re more likely to become a customer’s go-to whenever they or their contemporaries have a query related to your industry. With researched articles, increased brand awareness and a respectable reputation, clicks are more likely to make the transition into tangible business leads.
Essentially, what is comes down to is having the best of both worlds. You need to create a precarious balance of high-quality content posted just regularly enough to keep ‘em coming back for more. Tricky, but not impossible, provided there is a little planning and whole lot of clever re-purposing of good content. For example, a single piece of writing can be re-hashed into a multi-piece series, sprouting several blog posts, script for video or a white paper. By setting yourself clear goals to create benchmarks, you’ll be able to analyse whether your tactics on point or if you’re in need of some clever content creation from the experts.
And on that note, if you’re confounded by content, we’re here to help. Have a gander through the work we’ve already curated here, and if you’re impressed – which obviously, you will be, get in touch.
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