Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In January, I wrote a post called Content Shock which explained that we are entering a new phase in the evolution of content-based marketing. There are primarily two dynamics driving this change:

The amount of content on the web is literally exploding. By 2020, the amount of web-based information (most of it consumer-driven) is expected to increase by 600%. Think about that for a moment. If you can imagine the vastness of the Internet today, in six years we will have six of those.

Today an average American spends about 10 hours a day consuming content, a number that has risen steadily year by year. But there is a threshold to the amount of attention we will be able to devote to content, which will further challenge a marketer’s ability to get messages through to their audience and stakeholders.

I wrote about a third factor — the development of advanced content filters — as another emerging issue that will make it harder to get our content to emerge as the signal instead of the noise.

My conclusion was that these pressures are bound to thin the herd. Content marketing as we know it will not be a sustainable strategy for some businesses, and it will become more difficult and expensive for almost all of us.

How do we break through this information density and win in a hyper-competitive content market?...

Here are brief descriptions of 10 possible strategies to break through....

Research from CMI/Marketing Profs and others shows that business content “production” is going into hyper drive in 2015 and beyond. In fact, between now and 2020, the amount of information on the Internet is expected to increase by 500% (and some experts believe that number is conservative). So let’s get our heads around that fact. If you can imagine the vastness of the Internet, in the next few years, we are going to have five of those.

If you think getting your message through is difficult now, well … fasten your seat belt.

Most marketers “get it.” The Content Shock topic has been featured in dozens of podcasts, webinars and conferences. There were a remarkable number of blog posts written about the subject — more than 700 so far.  And of that total, less than 10 posts had an outright dismissive response to the primary position of the article — information density will dramatically impact the nature of business competition. If you are actively working in marketing today, you know that Content Shock is not a theory. You’re already fighting through it every day.