Over the past decade, companies have increasingly used content marketing to drive growth. In virtually every industry, marketers use content marketing to better engage their audiences, increase brand awareness, improve reputation, and grow their client base. Two primary types of content marketing exist, and here we will argue over which type is more effective. Two approaches are outlined below:
1) lower-volume but higher-quality content
2) Traffic-generating content that provides little value but is high in volume.
Qualitative content versus quantitative content. What is the right amount of content? How good should the content be? Every industry’s content marketers are currently facing the same dilemma: Is it worthwhile creating a lot of blog content? How often should we publish it? How long should it be? What will be its cost? And how good does it need to be?
Here’s your chance to resolve this mystery once and for all!
But first, let’s delve into the basic definition of content marketing.
Content Marketing
“The goal of content marketing is to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable actions by them”
In summary, content marketing involves creating content that addresses common problems faced by your target audience and educates them about new trends. Compared to traditional outbound marketing, this method has proved to be more effective in recent years.
The Debate Between Quality and Quantity
High-quality or high-volume content is the subject of ongoing debate. Which is better? Compare both and get the answer to this query.
The Argument for Quality over Quantity
1- Great Reach and Exposure
A unique value proposition delivered by high-quality content speaks for itself. The more it solves common problems for your target audience and addresses relevant industry trends, the more likely it is to be shared on social media and in other ways.
As a result, your content is viewed by a larger audience, which increases your brand’s reach. Content of low quality is less likely to be shared. It means you spend time and resources developing it, then it just sits there.
2- Reputation and Brand Awareness
The content saturating the airwaves today, combined with high levels of competition in most markets, makes it easy for your content to get lost. You can establish your brand as an authority in your area if, on the other hand, your content marketing efforts target high-quality content.
Resultantly, you can become an industry leader by showcasing your expertise and providing consumers with solutions to their problems. In this way, your brand will improve its reputation and raise its brand awareness, both of which will lead to increased demand for your content. Content that is high in volume and low in quality won’t have the same effect. However, a sea of mediocre content will drown it instead.
3- Differentiating yourself
The available content in our new era is so vast that readers are often overwhelmed by it. Markets have hit a saturation point with content these days. This is known as “peak content.” Especially now, when there is so much content available, it is imperative to create content that will be unique.
By providing unique value, you will set yourself apart from your competitors. Content that is high-volume and mirrors the other content that is saturating the market will not help differentiate your business.
4- Repurposing
Content repurposing occurs when a high-quality piece of content is taken and repurposed into additional content around the same idea. For example, by writing an eBook that generates lots of engagement, you can utilize this momentum to create additional content based on it. You might consider shortening the eBook and publishing a blog post that concentrates on the main ideas and key takeaways.
Using this method, you can create one amazing piece of content and walk away with three or four additional pieces. There are varying preferences regarding how your target audience consumes content. Some prefer long-form content such as eBooks. Others prefer shorter content they can digest more quickly, such as blogs and infographics.
You can distribute high-quality content in a variety of formats and via a wide range of marketing channels by creating high-quality content. Low-quality content pieces cannot be repurposed, since they don’t have enough “meat” to warrant repurposing–but you can stretch them.
5- Better customer experience
Today’s consumers make purchasing decisions based on their experiences with companies. Your customers will likely leave you for another company if you do not focus on providing a world-class customer experience. You will also damage your brand’s reputation if you provide a poor customer experience. When it comes to social media, consumers who have a bad experience with your company can be brutal in their comments.
Your ability to grow your business over the long term will be highly compromised because customers experience poor service. When you provide high-quality content that lets your target market know about emerging trends and solves real problems, you’re providing a great customer experience. This will improve customer loyalty, which in turn will reduce customer churn.
The Argument for Quantity over Quality
1- More content equals more traffic
It is the belief of the high-volume content advocates that if you produce more content, you will receive more traffic simply because there is more of it to catch readers’ attention. In addition to SEO tactics, they also pull out strategies that will give your content pages a boost in search engine rankings. On the most basic level, that may be true.
However, the secret to growing a business isn’t more traffic, but new customers. The best way to write content is to directly address your audience’s needs rather than to try to fit into Google’s ever-changing algorithm. Increasing traffic does not necessarily lead to an increase in business growth. In order to drive quality traffic to your site, you must attract customers who are actually interested in what you’re selling. Low-quality, high-volume content does not accomplish that.
2- Works better for established companies
There are some ways in which this is true. Once a business becomes a thought leader, it can release lots of content that offers less value, and the readers are still likely to engage with it because they trust the business and are loyal. Having said that, this is only possible once a company has established itself.
To be regarded as a thought leader, it must first produce high-quality content that increases brand awareness. So, for well-established companies, high-volume content may work in the end, but the goal is only achieved through high-quality content.
3- Robots can do the job
In the near future, artificial intelligence (AI) will be used more and more to produce large volumes of content for companies. The Washington Post is being written by robots for Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and owner of Nash Holdings, the holding company that owns Amazon.com. However, the article’s initial draft is written by an AI algorithm, which still needs to be reviewed and proofread by a human editor. As a result, more than 1000 articles are published every day by The Washington Post.
There is one main drawback to this approach: the robots can only write basic, simple content. In addition to not understanding some issues, they cannot write complex articles either. Even though robots can generate a wide variety of content, it is unlikely that the content will be of high quality.
Final Thoughts__Which one is the WINNER?
The answer to this question is that there is not really a true objective winner, neither the quality content nor the quantity content. These different objectives of content marketing work for different businesses. Nevertheless, most content marketers agreed on a few key takeaways:
- In the recent era of peak content, marketers require high-quality content to become prominent in the crowd.
- High-volume, low-quality content usually loses to low-volume, high-quality content.
- Highly quality content always beats low-quality content.
We have noticed that although there is no distinctive winner between the two schools of thought about content marketing, high-quality content tactics are the most preferred one for content marketers.
How are you leveraging your content marketing? Either you prefer quantity or quality in content marketing? Share your opinions or beliefs in the comment section below and avail our best SEO Bellingham services.
