There’s a misconception in content marketing that in order to be successful you need to produce more content. In the spirit of our #12DaysofContent theme, think about children during the holiday season. Seeing a bigger bounty of presents might appear exciting, but one quality gift could be even better.
As Brafton’s editorial production coordinator, this is absolutely something I’ve seen. Search engines used to reward more content, and in turn, we created 200-word news briefs that were keyword dense, and at the time, SEO friendly. The goal first and foremost was to populate our websites with more content – and with that, we lost sight of quality.
Luckily, quantity over quality is in the rear-view mirror for 2016. Rather than investing more in content, marketers should be investing smarter. Now’s the time to consider this, because:
- The average business produces 14 different types of content, but more than half of all web content has no shares, no links and low views. This shows that there’s plenty of content out there. People don’t need more options, they want better options.
- Thin content ranks poorly in search results, according to Moz’s annual search ranking factors report. When defining thin content, think about if the information you’re presenting is surface-level (common-sense stuff), or if it’s something users could easily find on multiple sites across the web.
In-depth and long form aren’t one in the same
If you’ve been keeping up with our 12 Days of Content series and know that we’ve already talked about longform content, it’s important to note that we aren’t talking about the same thing. While longform content is a great way to present a complex topic, there are other ways to provide valuable information to viewers without asking them to commit to reading 1,000+ words.
In-depth content could be found in the form of:
- Infographics that break down a lot of statistics into a visual narrative
- Animated videosthat explain a topic or instructions quickly but thoroughly.
- Interviews that provide insights that couldn’t be found elsewhere.
The best place to start with in-depth content? Creating an editorial mission statement. It’s something only 28 percent of B2B brands say they have one, but it’s a powerful way to document the reason behind every piece of content you create. If it doesn’t map to your editorial mission, you might want to consider its value in the first place.
Check out examples of how in-depth content has worked for our clients:
