Before you next hit ‘publish’, ask yourself: Is the content I am about to deliver just ‘good enough to go live’. On a popular topic, grammatically correct and run through the spell check? Or is it truly great content? Exceptional and engaging enough to stand out from the tsunami of media threatening to drown audiences in mass-produced mediocrity every day?
Because the recent State of The Content Marketer Report by audio and video platform Casted reveals that while content marketers are super busy spending an average of 33 hours a week creating content, 43% think their content is just good enough to get published, with only 1% rating their content as ‘excellent’ in terms of effectiveness.
So, along with the current economic climate, perhaps one of the greatest threats to customer media right now is the ease with which it can be created and distributed – particularly online. What the latest research from the Content Marketing Institute describes as ‘creating content for the sake of creating content’. Without a clear strategy and in many cases in response to ad-hoc requests.
With 4.4 million new blog posts published every day, it’s safe to say that publishing quantity over quality is an all-too common condition. But it also provides the opportunity to cut through the noise, eschew one-size-fits-all content creation and deliver customer media that leads the way.
At Redactive, we endeavour to achieve this in the membership and professional organisations space. Where the power of printed publications is still in demand to demonstrate value, albeit as part of multi-channel strategies that develop the effectiveness of digital content alongside print.
Of course, the challenges of inflationary pressure on paper, print and distribution are making magazine and journal production more expensive. But our own readership research consistently shows that the ‘lean-back’ treat of reading a print publication still offers unrivalled depth of engagement, with pass-on readerships also broadening reach to connect with new and wider audiences.
Underpinning each client’s content strategy with an owned media print brand can create the ‘amplified marketing’ that everyone is looking for today. The poster site at the start of a customer journey. Enticing and directing readers out to explore a wider content ecosystem of online articles, video, podcasts, webinars and more.
Even better, many of the digital assets mentioned above can be created extremely cost effectively by taking a 360-degree approach at the magazine planning stage. Considering the potential of each piece of content for optimisation in multiple formats and distribution via multiple channels. Delivering quality and quantity through a suite of gold-standard content, confident of success.
So, next time your fingers are hovering over the keyboard, just pause to consider: Who am I writing for? What business goal can I help deliver? And what value can I bring to the audiences we serve?
This article was first published in the Publishing Partners Guide (PPG) 2023, which is published and distributed by InPublishing. You can register to receive InPublishing magazine here.
