Show Quantity the Door

I speak to a lot of B2B content marketers. It can be exhausting. Not speaking to them, of course, but hearing them talk about all the stuff on their plates. The list of To Dos is overwhelming. I'm truly worried that in trying to adopt the new mandates for continuous content development and distribution that we're going to start seeing major burnout.

The inspiration for this post goes to Eric Wittlake (@wittlake) who wrote a post about how social media is lowering our content standards. His premise is the more we feel the need to share content, the less interested we are in reading it. But additionally, that the pressure to churn it out is resulting in mediocre content development. Amen and Kudos to Eric for focusing the spotlight.

It's been a project to try and substantiate and shift the perspective of value in regards to lead generation from quantity to quality. Please don't tell me that the "quantity" mindset is now invading content marketing.

Here's why I'm concerned. I see marketers with To Do lists that look like this:

• 2 - 3 blog posts weekly
• 1 nurture asset for each campaign every 3 weeks - B2B companies average 3 concurrent campaigns.
• 1 white paper per month
• 1 case study per quarter
• Tweet 5 times per day minimum (only 1 about our stuff)
• Produce at least 1 webinar per quarter
• Record and post 1 - 3 videos per month
• And more.

Often that's the plan. There's no strategy, except for quantity. The justification is SEO, getting found, staying top of mind, staying current. No wonder executives are asking, where's the frickin ROI? Sure it's great to achieve that list of things, but there needs to be more to it than that.

The point is really not how much content is produced, but how compelling a story it tells that help your prospects and customers find the answers to the problems they're trying to solve.  If that means doing so with less, but better content, then that's what marketers should do. That's what turns prospects into customers - not how many of your content assets they read.

Quite frankly, if the content produced and distributed is medicre, it's a reflection of the impression your company will make. If the impression is bad, then you've just wasted all that effort to generate followers, opt-in subscribers and web traffic because it won't work. It's not about the amount of stuff, it's the substance.

Once again, let's please show quantity for quantity's sake the door. The focus must remain firmly fixed on quality.

 

Comments

[DerekEdmond]

I definitely agree that strategy should be defined and in some cases, SEO takes the forefront (though I find it gets left out just as much).

That said, the reverse might be just as bad: "content paralysis" - or when nothing gets produced because of a fear that content will not be of a high enough quality.

My sense is it is important to have a healthy conversation about the goals and production of a content campaign, realizing that things might change over time.

[Wittlake]

Ardath, wow, thanks for the shoutout here. Your sample list of content development mandates really drives the point home.

I would love to see marketers take this up, and really focus on creating content that is valuable to the audience, worth the time to consume and worthy of investing their personal equity by sharing it with others.

This might mean less content overall. Personally, I would welcome it. It seems that companies, on one hand, cannot keep up with the demands for content, while on the other hand, the audience is awash in so much content they can't filter through it to find what is valuable.

I could spin off from that thought into the problems gating creates and how it exacerbates the lack of filtering by discouraging sharing, but it would quickly become an entire blog post of its own. ;-)

[Barbara Bix]

Hi Ardath,

Like you, I see these long "to do" lists on many marketers' plate. Their marching orders? Generate leads.

Most are so busy with tactics, strategy goes by the wayside. It's not just a matter of producing quality content.

As you so often point out in your blog, it's a matter of producing the right content and delivering it to the right places so that buyers will have it when they need it. That is, quality is not objective. Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

If quality is in the eye of the beholder, then more important than any content development is finding out what buyers--and those that influence them--need. Only then can you determine what content to invest in.

In my experience, it's not uncommon to find that companies are developing content for the wrong people about the wrong things. Frequently, that's because they don't have time to do research....

They "know" their prospects, what they need are more leads :-)

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Barbara,

Thanks for stopping by and contributing your thoughts. I see the same thing you see. The problem is that when we're moving so fast, we forget to stop and think about what "assume" can actually mean :)

Buyer research is a top challenge for many. Without it, marketers will never have a strategy that makes sense.

[SMS Reseller]

Great post! I start SEO 6 months ago and this is really good infomation for me and I’m newbie on the road, these could definetly help.

[Monster Beats By dr. dre]

If quality is in the eye of the beholder, then more important than any content development is finding out what buyers--and those that influence them--need. Only then can you determine what content to invest in.

In my experience, it's not uncommon to find that companies are developing content for the wrong people about the wrong things. Frequently, that's because they don't have time to do research....