In digital marketing, the emphasis for a long time strategy now has been on quality, rather than quantity. However, since information technology provides new ways of providing content, it becomes easier and cheaper to focus on quantity and to provide more content. Therefore, the future of content might be focusing on more content.
This will not be the case because it has worked for a couple of famous sites just as The Post, but also because content will take a wider range of forms, as for instance: High volume content strategies, automated content, short form content and video content. As a result, the accessibility of publishing tools will also improve, making it easier to create and publish content.
To elaborate more on high volume content strategies, this success relies on the long tail theory. This originated in e-commerce and is the theory that collectively, the demand for a large number of niche products, can exceed the collective demand for a small number of popular or bestselling products. Using the long tail theory, The Post (for instance) is creating thousands of niche articles, which each attract modest traffic, rather creating fewer, big content articles, as collectively the niche articles deliver more traffic overall.
Furthermore, the cost of content production is falling because of the approved internet technology, even as distribution cost are very low, enabling more content to be produced. At the moment we are seeing a high volume approach being taken by many established B2B sites and influencers. Tools are also constantly developing, which will help many people mote to producing higher volumes of content.
Do you think there is still a future for content quantity? Or do you think the volume of content will be lower in the end? Will the long tail theory still be an essential part of the future of content?
I think the long tail theory will definitely remain very relevant for the quantity of digital marketing content. Even more so, I think it will continue to become increasingly relevant. As the individualization of persons continue to grow over the years, parallel to the ability of the internet to provide personalized content, I think it will be inevitable for the quantity of digital marketing content to grow.
Next to that, I expect the quality of the content to rise as well, as content production software will improve the ability to create good content, similar to the decreasing efforts needed for music production in the music industry. It is a fact that the speed and quantity of music production has never been as high as it is today, because of the availability of producing software.
So, there will be value for companies to improve their ability to create niche content, while remaining competitive in regards of quality along the way. The ability of consumers to find personal content is a driving factor behind the increasing volume of content. This ability to find personal content, trough search engines for example, creates the demand for personalized content. Increased personal content means a larger diversity of content and a fatter and longer long tail.
However, a thing to consider is algorithms getting more sophisticated in the future. This will enhance the reach of automated niche articles, content generation will be increasingly automated. This might enable more attention to be focused on the quality of the content, rather than quantity of the content. I reckon it will be needless to say that the volume of content will be higher. The question is if the price will become sufficiently low for quality of the content to be the determining factor. Eventually, I think it will be.