Consumer engagement plays a vital role in today’s increasingly-connected business environment. Companies fill their webpages with interactive materials and excellent content to keep their clients interested and to attract more visitors.
Content marketing has evolved into a vital part of a company’s overall marketing strategy; without content, a company has lesser chances to entice prospective clients with their products.
Marketing experts stand by the effectiveness of content marketing in promoting a brand online. Engaging and relevant content aimed at the right audience can trigger discussions and queries, which can lead to increased brand exposure. Content that provides new and exciting information can also do wonders for a brand’s reputation.
Despite the benefits of content marketing, there are instances when it can go too far.
Sure, the brand may post new content at least twice a week, but does it provide something new or profound? Excessive content that doesn’t provide something new to a conversation can adversely affect a brand’s reputation.
Similarly, poorly-researched content can hurt a company’s name. When these combine, an information overload happens. As a result, consumers become less engaged because there is just too much content to go through.
Information overload is a real problem for business owners like you because it pushes away your prospective clients.
So, how do you deal with information overload without compromising your content marketing plans? Quite simply, all you need is to market bigger with less content.
Help! There’s Too Much Information!
Before delving into the importance of cutting back on content, it’s time to discuss the context of ‘information overload’ for business owners like you.
On average, at least 17 new web pages are published per second, while a whopping 2 million new blog posts are posted daily. Even if you gather data from just one week, you will observe an overwhelming amount of newly-published content.
Now, imagine the average internet user having to sift through all of these data just to get to the content that they want to read.
In the past, content marketers were more concerned with making sure that the business gets a lot of exposure online through various blogs and posts that highlight their features, products, and services. The old mindset was that exposure was the main driving force that can help gather more views and more customers for a brand. – This, however, has resulted in a glut of data that not everyone would want to read, leading to the aforementioned information overload.
Content marketers and business owners need to remember that what counts isn’t the amount of content, but the value of it.
Three blog posts posted a week would mean nothing if they don’t provide new ideas or they actually have poorly-researched data. Unless you are talking about seasonal topics and the like, repetitive information is a no-no, either.
Remember that content is created for the end-user’s sake; an information overload prevents the end-user from getting what he or she wants. So it is important to prevent that from happening as much as possible.
Going on a ‘Content Diet’
The gist of the ‘more marketing with less content’ idea is simple: focus on the topics you know best, and market it to the people right people.
This rings true now more than ever, especially since it is becoming more difficult to produce engaging content. This isn’t just a problem for regular content writers; even authoritative content providers with years of experience are finding it difficult to grab the audience’s attention.
The glut of information available online has made it difficult to keep audiences satisfied with new content. Posting plenty of content to a wide variety of channels won’t help, either. These days, it is better for you to go on a ‘content diet’ to avoid any adverse effects on your brand and audience engagement.
Basically, you are reducing the amount of content that you publish on a regular basis. For example, instead of going for four to five posts a week, you cut back to at least two posts a week.
Does Length Matter?
Reducing your content posting however, should not result in a reduction of the information within your posts.
As you reduce the amount of time dedicated to publishing, you must increase the amount of effort into creating high-quality material for your content pages. This means that what you write must be a major benefit, or at least be of immediate use to your target audience.
A quality post talks about a topic that is relevant to the target audience, contains credible and reliable research, and is easy to understand.
Do not fall for the illusion of length. When it comes to high-quality and engaging content, the post length does not matter. Beating around the bush won’t help make your brand more popular. People prefer reading content that is straight-to-the-point, and as such would avoid any content that keeps on looping around before going for the main idea.
There are a number of big-name content makers who are known for their lengthy blog posts, but it does not mean that what they do can work for your brand.
Each niche and each brand has their own style when it comes to marketing; their recommended lengths, writing language and content vary greatly. Writing in a style that fits your niche, marketing preferences and overall brand identity will help you make your content more effective, thereby attracting more customers.
Going Micro
We’ve already discussed how effective content marketing relies on quality content targeted at the right audience and posted in moderate intervals.
Written content is the main material that you can rely on to drive leads to your website. In some cases, however, you don’t have to write out what you want to say, but instead you just have to show it in visual form.
Making easily-digestible content is a must for marketers, especially if you are targeting the mobile user market. There are users who wouldn’t spend time reading an 800-word blog post even if the information is relevant to them. As such, relying on visual content can be a good alternative to getting your message across. Additionally, you can provide content that answers simple topics like how-to questions and industry-relevant historic quotes. Short as they may be, they can be a powerful marketing tool when used right.
Keeping your target market engaged can be difficult, even if you provide quality content. But if you maintain a consistent level of quality and avoid content overload, success can surely be within the reach for your digital marketing endeavor in the Philippines.