Content management and content marketing are big buzzwords these days–at least in the circles where we travel! As a writer for a number of years this is great news to me, and to the communication students I work with. The demand for quality content is arguably greater than it has ever been before–and growing exponentially.
The State of the Media Report from the Pew Research Journalism Project for 2014 reported that BIA/Kelsey estimated that native advertising revenues reached $2.3 billion in 2013, up from $1.6 billion in 2012—and projected that revenues would reach $4.6 billion by 2017. That’s big business. The challenge for marketers, of any size, is delivering content that their audiences value which is becoming increasingly challenging to do.
Why? Because with the proliferation of content now available online in both print and visual forms, consumers have options. Gone are the days when “content farms” like Demand Media could satisfy the need for content through generic “fluff” churned out by writers making pennies for their work. These days, content must be not only high quality, but customized. Generic just doesn’t cut it anymore.
In addition to discerning consumers, search engines like Google are also becoming more selective in terms of the criteria used to identify high quality content that allows organizations to rank well—a key to getting in front of 21st century consumers.
So where will content come from? I interviewed Jake Athey, marketing manager for Widen Enterprises, Inc., a digital asset management provider based in Madison, Wis., earlier this year. He indicated that content will come from a wide range of sources, including:
- Customer/user-generated content via mobile devices and social media
- Analysis of big data and data visualization
- Video capture via mobile devices and “low budget,” or short form video
- Capturing the ideas and experience of subject matter experts
Traditional journalists and professional writers may be big winners in this new, more discerning era, many predict. In fact, many of those who were laid off during the recession are finding themselves back in demand again as a wide range of organizations (not just traditional publishers) are looking for quality content.
We’ve also seen a significant uptick in the requests we receive to create customized content for a wide range of clients–everything from social media posts, to web content, white papers and contributed articles. Importantly, the value of this content can be readily demonstrated through analytics that demonstrate an increase in social media and web traffic and engagement–and, most importantly leads and sales.
The future looks bright for content providers that can create quality content, in a variety of forms (e.g. print, video and visual) to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for more relevant, more real-time and more reliable content.
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