I’m Drowning in a Sea of Content!

Dramatic title I know. But there’s so much of it. It’s everywhere. I’ve got multiple devices. Whichever one I look at; I get multiple pieces of content fighting for my attention. Some of it I’ll consume. Some of it I’ll love. Some of it I’ll share. But so much of it, I’ll just flick past. No matter how much content I consume, there will always be so much more that I miss. So much content goes unnoticed. Yet I know that so many hours have been painstakingly put into creating it.

In a world where budgets are tight, I can’t help but wonder whether all this content production is really the best use of time and money.

“Content is King”. There’s a phrase we’ve all been royally spoon-fed for over a decade. And with good reason I suppose. Content enables you to emotionally connect with your audiences. Content sets the scene for direct interaction with your customers. Content enables you to build trust. But all these things are only true, if people are actually engaging with your content.

Online, to some degree, we’re all victim to the ever-changing algorithms. The more they prioritise long-form content, the more we all write. The more they prioritise quality, the more time we spend editing. The more they prioritise new content, the more frequently we all publish content. We’ve become the biggest factory on the planet, churning out reams and reams of content. To give you an idea of scale, in 2008 there were just shy of 8 million websites. Today, there are more than 750 million websites and that number is growing by the day (netcraft.com). The more content that’s out there, the harder it becomes to cut through the noise, and the more content there will be that goes unnoticed.

But these days it’s impossible to build a brand without content marketing, leaving you with two options; join the rat race and churn out the content, or get left behind. So… I guess we’re all in on the rat race.

So how do we create content efficiently?

There are a few considerations here:

1)     Should we be creating evergreen or ephemeral content?

Evergreen content is content that doesn’t go out of date – it will always remain relevant regardless of the news or current season. This means it has longevity, which means its’ search traffic will continue to grow over time. There’s an efficiency there. Win. Let’s create loads of evergreen content. Surely that’s the most valuable content to create right?

Think again. It is important to create some key pieces of evergreen content targeting your most important keywords (aligned to your audience needs, as identified through search query listening and keyword research). However, it’s important not to rule out other forms of content. Look at the direction our most popular social media channels are heading in; Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, even Facebook – they’re all centred around relevant but short-lived content – ephemeral content. Should you invest in the production of content that will become lifeless within 24 hours? Seems crazy right? But the statistics show that ephemeral content is here to stay. Ephemeral content is shared 40 times more often than other forms of content on social media (resultfirst.com). Undoubtedly the production of such short-lived content is time-intensive due to the frequency at which you need to create it, but a key reason for such high engagement with short-lived content tends to be in its authenticity, so at least there’s no need to waste too much time on curation and making it shiny (every cloud as they say).

Obviously, the type of content you produce is going to depend on who you’re targeting and what your goals are. For now, ephemeral content is very popular with younger audiences in the Millennial and Generation Z demographics. But I suspect we’ll see these audiences expand in time.

2) Quantity versus Quality

Every time algorithms change, we see thought leaders chiming in on the quantity versus quality debate; Should you spend your time creating more content, or you should spend your time creating fewer pieces of content to a higher standard? I don’t really like to answer that question. (Obviously the answer’s quality. I get the challenge – everyone’s on some crazy hamster wheel trying to run faster and produce more content than their competitors). However, in my mind, quantity vs quality is the wrong debate.

The real reason so much content goes unnoticed, is because it gets created, and then gets floated into the sea, without any real thought behind its distribution plan. If something’s just left to drift away, it’s course will be determined by luck. We can all get lucky sometimes, but equally there are days when luck just won’t be on our side. Whereas if you plan the route you want to take (using data and insight), you’re far more likely to bump into your audiences along the way. It’s for this reason, that no matter how good your content is, your content’s success (and therefore your brand’s success) often lives or dies by your distribution choices. How do we create an effective distribution plan? That’s the debate we should be having.

3) How do we create an effective distribution plan?

Let’s start with what we mean by a distribution plan – I’m referring to the channels and platforms we choose to use to promote the content that we publish. Whether it’s owned, earned, shared or paid media channels, the number of channel choices is growing, and if you don’t use data, it can be a bit of a minefield to have confidence that you’re making the right channel choices, with the right level of investment.

The importance of Content Strategy

Before we jump into our distribution plan, we should reference our content strategy. Your content strategy should define how you will continuously demonstrate who you are and what value you will bring to your customers through content. It will include your content marketing goals, your target audiences, what sets you apart from the competition, and how you will measure the success of your content against the goals defined. By aligning all of your content marketing to your strategy, you will ensure that every piece of content you create has a pre-defined purpose, that is measurable, brings value to your audiences, and helps you to achieve your business goals.

I cannot emphasise enough how important the audience element of your content marketing strategy is. Let’s talk about people. If we want our content to be seen by the right people, we need to clearly define who it is that we’re targeting. Once we know who we want to reach, we need to make sure we understand those audiences; what are they looking for?, what are they interested in?, what media do they consume?, what platforms do they use?, when do they use them?

For a distribution plan to be effective, understanding your audience is key, and if you’ve already got this insight as a part of your content strategy, you don’t need to keep redoing it for every distribution plan you create. I recently wrote an article on this subject ‘the art of listening’ referencing some of the underutilised approaches to gathering data to help you to understand your audience (including search query listening, social listening and user testing). I was asked how to apply this information to a content strategy, so here we are (quick detour): In the audience section of your content marketing strategy you should include, not only who your audiences are, but also what they’re motivations are (search query listening), what they’re interested in (search query and social listening), what platforms they’re on and when, their media consumption habits (social listening and competitor research), and their pain points (user testing).

You should use the insight presented in your content strategy to inform your content calendar – this is where you will align the defined subjects to relevant moments in time. So the insight in your content strategy helps with both pulling together a content calendar (choosing the most appropriate subject matter), content creation (creating that content in the format that most resonates with your audience - article, video, photography, infographic etc.) and with content distribution (understanding which search terms your content should target to enable it to gain the best possible chance of success in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs) and the best chance of achieving a high quality score if you’re using a paid approach such as PPC, as well as understanding which platforms your audiences are most present on (and when).

Before you reach content creation stage, I find that the audience insight in a content strategy can be enhanced by the creation of audience personas (appreciate this may be a contentious approach). For me, personas encourage me to look at my target audience members as people, helping me to identify with them, and produce content that’s relatable.

Creating a Content Distribution Plan

Back to our distribution plan: If you’ve got all of this insight predefined in your content strategy, you’ve got a strong starting point for your distribution plan:

Stage 1: Proposition

(NB. This stage is not always necessary but can be beneficial for larger campaigns).

The creative proposition for your campaign, or the creative concept for the particular piece of content you’re looking to distribute, should have been derived from insight. Refer to that piece of insight / simple truth, to create an approach to distribution that aligns to your creative. This will help to reinforce your messaging and reach the right audience at the right time.

Stage 2: Channel choices

You need a clear understanding of each channel (the role it plays and therefore when it will be of value to you), your goals (what are you trying to achieve and which channels lend themselves best to helping you get there), how each channel aligns to your audience (refer to insight referenced above), and your brand voice (whether the tone of the channel is appropriate for your brand). You will also need to consider your resources (the skillsets available to you, your budget (where outsourcing or use of paid channels are on the table), your ability to deliver (if you’re working alone, you might choose just one channel rather than spreading yourself too thinly), and your ability to respond (if choosing interactive channels where responses will be expected from the customer).

I find plotting channels on a matrix of ‘audience relevance’ and ‘ease of implementation’ can help to simplify the selection.

Stage 3: Selecting the right level of investment

Regarding resources, budget is a key consideration. Do you need to spend money on content distribution? Not necessarily, and certainly not always, but it can help if used strategically. Paid distribution channels include ad networks, paid social media, native advertising, influencer marketing etc. They tend to involve you partnering with someone else (usually a company) to provide content for their audience.

There are plenty of unpaid routes – email, SEO, social media, PR, guest blogging etc. These should be your bread and butter – they each have the potential to bring a huge degree of success to your content’s distribution if executed well. (It definitely pays to use specialist skillsets in each of these areas.) However, owned and earned channels do have their limitations. For example, it will often take time for content to be indexed by search engines and start gaining rankings, so if time’s not on your side, you may not be in a position to rely solely on SEO. Social media algorithms increasingly lend themselves to encouraging content owners to use paid routes in order to reach the largest audiences (this does not mean you can’t hit big numbers organically anymore, but it takes time, commitment and consistency to grow large social followings, and even once you’ve built them, the algorithms work in such a way that your content won’t be shown to all of your followers). So, if it’s new audiences you need to reach, paid channels should be a consideration, particularly if you need to reach new audiences at scale. For this reason, paid channels often lend themselves well to awareness content or content that forms part of an acquisition campaign. A key benefit to paid routes is the granularity of audience targeting, so if your audience insight is up to date, it gives you a good opportunity to reach the right people.

If you use paid routes, be prepared to optimise them – adjusting the targeting parameters and creative assets towards what’s resonating with your target audience, whilst your paid campaign is live, is imperative to the efficiency of spend.

My advice would be to start with a small budget (relative to what you can afford). Think about the minimum return you would be happy to accept for your investment, use a forecasting tool to help keep you within your defined parameters. Then test, test, test and learn, to identify what works best for your audience and your goals. Then optimise, optimise, optimise so that your budget works as hard as possible for you.

Stage 4: Measures of success

Clearly define and articulate the role each of your selected channels is expected to play in helping you to achieve your distribution goals. Assign a clear measure of success to each channel. Build a picture over time of which channels perform best for which goals, audiences and content types.

Stage 5: Journey planning

Where more than one channel is at play, consider how those channels will interact with each other and how and when your audiences might move from one channel to another.

Distribution is Queen

So, there you have it, if Content really is King, then in my opinion, Distribution is Queen. If you’ve got a strong distribution plan, content production suddenly becomes worth investing in.

Nobody wants to drown. Sail your yacht* over to your audience and invite them on board (*that’s my slightly poor metaphor for taking your amazing content to them rather than letting it drift - in case the mention of a yacht did nothing but confuse you!). Use insight, make a plan, get your content in front of your audiences, make sure it brings value to them.

The more yachts that come my way, destined to meet me, the happier I’ll be.