Saturday, June 4, 2016

Content: More isn’t necessarily better


When it comes to content marketing, more isn’t necessarily better.  If one blog post per month is good, it doesn’t always follow that two posts will be really good.  In fact, it might be worse.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen content marketing work.  It can be especially effective for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies that need to keep customer acquisition costs under control.  If you provide good content - blog posts, newsletters, white papers, webinars, infographics, etc. - prospective customers are more likely to find you.  And that’s usually a lot less expensive than you trying to find them. 

Quantity vs. quality

But effective content marketing work doesn’t mean pushing out a deluge of content.
For one thing, producing good content isn’t easy.  I mean “good” in the sense of “useful to the intended reader.”  You want them to find some value in the material.  Prospective customers should be impressed with your expertise, not your word count.   

Some folks can crank out useful content day in and day out, but unless you’re Dear Abby, it might be better to give yourself more time to pull together your thoughts before publishing.

Over-burdening your audience

You should also think about content from your readers’ perspective.  Even if you do have the skill and bandwidth to crank out lots of content, do they have the bandwidth to read it? 

Remember, in the SaaS world, the person you’re targeting is usually a very busy person.  Besides evaluating solutions for their business, they have another full time job.  While they’re thinking about HR software, they’re also running the HR department.  While they’re considering marketing automation software, they’re running marketing campaigns.  Or while they’re evaluating, financial management solutions, they running Finance.  It’s not like they have all day to read, watch or listen to everything you push out during the course of a day or a week. 

A few thoughtful pieces are far more valuable to your prospective customers than a non-stop barrage.  There is a line between helpful content and spam.