By Mark Kersteen - July 7th, 2014

Last week, we surveyed over 300 marketers about the state of their content. We were surprised, and troubled, by some of our findings. The results also support the broad trends we’ve been seeing. Namely, that the content space is still growing (and becoming noisier).

The Highlights:

Content Quality

 

Content VolumeContent Increase

 

68.45% of marketers are satisfied with the quality of their content over the last six months.

62.80% don’t feel like they produce more content than their competitors.

75.30% intend to increase their content output by at least 15% in the next six months.

So we can say that marketers are generally satisfied with what they're producing, quality-wise. Then again, what determines whether content is ‘good’ still isn’t clear. Whether objectively high-quality informative content drives ROI is a separate, dicey debate.

The majority of marketers don’t feel like they produce more content than their competitors. ‘Feel’ is a fuzzy word, but we didn’t expect each marketer to have hard figures on all of their competitors—we decided to track sentiment instead. You have to wonder, do the producers who crank out the greatest volume still feel like their competitors are outpacing them?

Regardless of how they feel, over three-quarters of marketers are planning to create even more content than before. From these findings, it seems like the space is only going to keep getting noisier.

Once we begin digging into this data, there are some surprising finds.

Quantity Over Quality:

86.79% of the marketers who weren’t happy with the quality of their content planned to increase their output regardless. That’s an overwhelming majority of marketers who are pushing out more and more material that they aren’t happy with. That explains why this space is so crowded with mediocre content. Will content marketing continue to be effective if marketers prioritize volume over usefulness? Or will consumers become numb to boring, pervasive listicles, infographics and blog posts?

The Boom is Still Booming:

70.40% of the marketers who felt they produced more content than their competitors still planned to increase their output over the next six months. Again, increasing volume is a drive behind each of these marketers’ strategies. Eventually, this space is going to be flooded. Will superior content continue to float to the top? Or will the sheer volume drag down the effectiveness of even the best material?

When is Enough Enough?:

70.00% of the respondents who were satisfied with their content were planning to scale-up and create more. Will their satisfaction go down as the amount of content goes up? It isn't difficult to make an overwhelming amount of content; it's making an overwhelming amount of content that is worth engaging with that's hard.  I've seen firsthand how marketers will keep doing whatever works until it's broken beyond repair. I guess the big question is: could this happen to content, or is it a fundamentally different kind of marketing technique?

You can collaborate with us and get exclusive early access to information like this here! You can read all of our other posts on content here. To find out where content is going next, check out our panels on content at Incite Summit East.

comments powered by Disqus