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Can You Post Too Much Content?

I’m certain you’ve heard the old buzz phrase repeated more times than you’d care to recall – “content is king.” You could put together one of the most cunning, unique, and interesting marketing campaigns in the history of the Internet and perfectly optimize your site, but none of that will matter unless your content actually offers the reader something of value. Without good content, everything else is a moot point.

With that in mind, there’s a question I’d like to address. Content may be important, but is there such a thing as too much? Is it possible to offer such a high volume that – irrespective of quality – your users are overwhelmed and check out?

The short answer is “yes.”

More than anything else, the two most important elements of content marketing are quality and consistency. So long as you aim to offer the best content you possibly can – the sort of stuff that ignites conversation, sparks reader interest, and spurs people to share – volume isn’t necessarily important. Further, so long as you offer that content with some degree of regularity, your audience will keep coming back for more. Quality and consistency.

In that regard, it’s simply a matter of how much content you can offer before the quality of that content starts to slip. As long as you can keep to the same standard of quality with each post you make or article you write, then you probably aren’t writing up too many pieces. The moment you notice yourself starting to slip below excellence; that’s when you know you’re producing too much.

Of course, there’s a little more to it than that. According to content marketing expert Joe Chernov, every website has an “ideal balance” between quantity and volume. That balance isn’t one that’s determined by the creators, either: it’s solely the domain of the audience.

“The balance comes from the right amount of testing against what the overall objectives are,” Joe explained to the Content Marketing Institute. “The audience — not the publisher — determines content quality, and the same holds true for content volume. I’ve cut content output by 20 percent and I’ve still seen all KPIs increase because I [had been overproducing] the content.”

Alright, we’ve covered frequency? What about length? How large should each piece of content be?

As a general rule, less is more. Perhaps as a side effect of the Internet, people today have remarkably short attention spans. If a piece drags on for long enough, most readers will eventually get bored, check out, and go do something else.

Because of this, a good best practice for each piece of content you put together is to work out exactly how much writing you need to do (or exactly how long a video/podcast needs to be) in order to cover the essentials of the topic. Write not a word more. More often than not, by keeping it concise you’ll gain more than if you cover every excruciating little detail.

Content may be king, but not every king is a good one. Although every audience is different, each one has their own threshold for length and frequency. If you exceed that threshold, it won’t matter how good your content is – people probably aren’t going to bother with it.

About Daniel Page—Daniel is the Director of Business Developement for Ahosting, a leading provider in SEO hosting and multiple IP hosting. Follow Ahosting on Twitter at @ahostingdotnet, Like them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ahostingdotnet, and check out all the services they offer on http://www.ahosting.net/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Daniel Page .