One of the most common questions we get asked as an agency is how much content? Clients always want to know the level of content they should be placing on social media platforms and in traditional media.
It’s never straightforward and our answers to these questions will always vary but in my view there are some fundamentals that can be applied, whatever the business scenario.
Know your audience
Firstly you have to understand (along the lines of David Attenborough...) the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the potential customers and influencers you are trying to reach. And before you start writing blogs, drafting reports, sourcing industry data, producing videos etc. etc. you need to think about the type of commercial messaging that will actually resonate with your target audiences.
Getting to know you
Knowing your audience is so important here. What do they really want to hear about? Latest industry trends? Educational insights? Or would they rather see amusing educational videos? Also what tone of voice and content will resonate with them? A formal transactional style or would they react more positively to a more informal casual approach?
Once you have agreed on the type of content and the overall style and approach you can start considering the level of content.
Now decide how much
If you are targeting senior decision makers the “less is more” approach, with the focus more on quality than quantity, will be the best option. A steady flow of well researched updates placed on selected target platforms will generate high levels of engagement with potential audiences, as opposed to multiple superficial posts which soon lose their impact and just bore your audience, not enticing them to engage with you.
If you are targeting a broader audience, an increased level of content updates will work well, spread across a wider range of platforms. This way, a broader seeding of content will hopefully create traction with all your target prospects at some point in all of their social media journeys.
But again, although in this case these updates need not be in-depth and can be more frequent, they must still meet the quality criteria – e.g. in line with agreed company and product messages, as well as being accurate and punchy. You can post amusing videos but all this broadcast content must still tick the corporate messaging box, no matter how ‘spontaneous’ or casual it may seem.
Time for content
But whoever you are targeting online or what content you are planning to seed, the overriding issue, and one which is often overlooked, is still the time your audience, whoever they are and whatever they do, actually has to engage with content. In our digital age. time is increasingly a rare commodity for most of us.
This is particularly pertinent for video – you really do need to get your key messages over in a punchy way within the first 10 to 20 seconds or risk being clicked away.
So no finite answers here, but the best way to navigate your way through the content maze is to understand your audience and really think about how much time they will really have to read tweets, look at video, read blogs etc across their working week.
Just think about their likely weekly diary, including their down time at the weekend, and this schedule will indicate pretty clearly the level of content from you they will be able to digest and engage with.