More content posted but less engagement

With marketing teams churning out more content a report suggests this has resulted in less engagement.

A problem previously highlighted on this blog is that with the diversity of user contributed content, particularly through social media channels, there is a thirst for more volume of content published and published more frequently. It doesn't necessarily follow that there is more news of interest to the consumers of this information.

Turn the clock back a decade or so and and the PR person usually held regular meetings with the client to tease out news stories.  It was not uncommon in the b-2-b world for the client to start with the statement that 'we haven't got any news'. The role of the PR person was to probe recent projects that had some unusual features, the use of new technology, major contract wins, new appointments, exhibition plans and the rest to draw up a list of potentially interesting stories. Then to research the story and produce a few deemed worthy of a press release. After all the necessary reviews and approvals the final version and accompanying glossy photograph were mailed to the editors of the relevant trade press. And they dropped most of them in the trash. Approximately one in twenty went forward for publication.

Back to the present. The editorial waste bin no longer weeds out the junk news from the genuine stuff - the problem is now finding enough
to fill the growing options for self published news. The thing is the same old issues remain - there is not a lot of exciting content any more than there was before. But now there is nobody to bin the trivial stuff. Instead the consumer becomes the ultimate editor and soon learns to switch most of it to the junk box.

The report by Track Maven discovered that between the start of 2013 and end of 2014 marketers increased content by a whopping 78%, but engagement measured by clicks, likes, comments, retweets, favourites etc fell by 60%.  Even more telling 23% of content received no engagement at all! And 43% received less than 10 interactions.