Monday, April 4, 2016

Have we reached peak content? Insights and issues highlighted by #ClickZChat

We've spoken a lot about the problem of peak content recently.


With so many more businesses now adopting publishing models to reach their audience and focus on inbound, it is becoming harder for both users and distributors to cut through the noise and uncover the really useful information out there.


Of course, it's fairly easy for us to spout opinion on this issue, but we wanted to know first hand how this is affecting marketers, so we decided to kick off our inaugural #ClickZChat on Twitter by asking our followers about the issues and possible solutions.



We decided to start by asking: is there really an issue here? Do you believe that we've reached (or are heading for) peak content? The point when there is so much information available that it becomes effectively useless?



Emma_SEO weighed in on this, asking if 'peak content was simply part of the eternal marketing search for the most relevant customer channel



With so much happening, it can be difficult for businesses to gain attention. Is the focus now too heavily focused on broadcast and moving away from genuine interaction? CatalystSEM's SEO Director Paul Shapiro agreed that we seem to be concentrating on volume rather than value:




This search for audience may have left marketers feeling the need to 'be everywhere' however, often spreading themselves too thin across multiple channels. Agency Director Kate Bogda summed the issue up nicely:



While Search Engine Watch's own Christopher Ratcliff pointed out the need for publishing organisations – whether traditional or those adopting the 'brands as publishers' model – need to find new ways to reduce volume and provide insight:



Wayne Schilstra Team followed up here, pointing out that it wasn't just about creating great content, but focusing on user intent. When and why do people need this content? Relevance almost always trumps volume:



Finally, with so much happening, can content still make waves? We wanted to know which creative examples had inspired you recently.



We had a huge range of examples here, from Denny's personalised tweets, O2 urging us all to 'be more dog' and movie marketing that can still make an impact a decade after it was originally conceived:



To finish on a lighter note, I'm going to big myself up at this point as I think Netflix has been doing some excellent work over the past year… and this conversation resulted in a fully-functioning House of Cards PollyHop search site.



Nice to see that social interaction can still take us in unexpected directions and provide standout creative: https://twitter.com/themick79i/status/715470399706771457



Key takeaways:


Overall it seems that marketers believe that too much content is becoming an issue.


The key here is to focus on intent and extraordinary value, rather than desperately hunting for updates to fill every social channel, creating hub content and building spin-off micro-content by channel can be a far more effective method.


By cutting down on volume, content creators also free themselves up to spend more time creating something truly useful.



Thanks to everyone who participated in #ClickZChat. We'll be holding our next session over on Twitter at noon EST on Wednesday, April 6th when we'll be talking about social media and Twitter in particular.


Do you believe Twitter has a future? We'd love to hear your opinions so do join us then.

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