How Social Media Measurement Can Help Fix Your Content Marketing Problems

Practically every business and non-profit these days is producing some sort of content marketing, creating a glut of Facebook and LinkedIn posts,  blogs, videos, ebooks, tweets, comments, pins, snapchats, and more.

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs revealed that 73 percent of marketers are now producing more content than they did in the previous 12 months. As brands continue to push for more posts, more images, and more videos, a number of content marketing gurus have warned that the current content marketing trend is unsustainable.

Is ‘Content Shock’ Coming?

While the amount of web-based content doubles every nine to 24 months, depending on the study cited, demand for content is limited, as people have only so many hours in the day.

According to a new study by TrackMaven, The Content Marketing Paradox, content per brand increased 78 percent from 2013 to 2014, but content engagement decreased 60 percent. Almost across the board, networks are seeing lower engagement rates for branded content.

As brands churn out more content, they benefit less. The more is better strategy is failing.

Mark Schaefer at Businesses Grow .com says marketers will soon reach “content shock,” a point when content production becomes uneconomical because it produces little benefit.

Based on the law of supply and demand, companies may soon have to pay people to view content marketing materials.

Strategy: Better Content Marketing, Not More

Rather than broadcasting the same content across more platforms, marketers must create smarter content based on data about audience needs and wants. Marketers have plenty of data at their disposal but typically rely on backward-looking, ROI-focused information that quickly becomes outdated. The rear-view mirror approach provides no insight into consumers’ current attitudes and interests.

Marketers that fail to adopt a “measure first” approach may soon find themselves facing ballooning content marketing costs for diminishing returns.

The Power of Social Media Analytics

Starfleet Media CEO Jeff Zabin agrees that social media analytics are the solution to the content tsunami. Social media monitoring and measurement allows marketers to understand their audiences and learn what content resonates with their audiences, he explains in an article for Business 2 Community. They can then deliver the right content through the right channels as opposed to aimlessly shoveling out more content.

Social media analytics can:

• Show how customers research products, including the questions they ask and where they obtain answers,

• Identify customers’ concerns and influences in regard to completing purchases,

• Track and measure responses to campaigns in progress,

• Report what content is connecting with different audiences, and

• Predict the likelihood of customers heeding various calls to action.

“Only by taking full advantage of social data can marketers drive optimal results with their content marketing activities,” Zabin concludes.

Bottom Line: Consumers and business professionals are buried in information as marketers broadcast more content across multiple platforms. Simply producing more content in an ongoing arms race yields no competitive advantage and is unsustainable over the long run. To develop better-targeted content, savvy marketers deploy social media measurement services to better understand what content their audiences need and prefer.