If you’ve been following along with our series on content strategy over the last few weeks, you’ve already learned about the laws of consumption, complexity and reputation. If you’d like to catch up, you can find all the posts here. If you’re ready to continue learning, then stay right here, because we’re moving on to the Law of Evolution in today’s post.
Examples of the evolution of content can be found everywhere. Here’s just one of them: A newly-launched career website lets job seekers upload video of themselves explaining their background and expertise, answer employer-submitted questions via an automated phone system, and upload sound bites to their profiles. Just think how much richer this content is when compared with the stand-alone, paper resumé of old.
This brings us to the fourth Law of Content: As technology improves, the production value of content goes up.
Increases in bandwidth, processing power and storage do not mean the written word is in immediate danger of losing its seat at the content table, but it clearly has less elbowroom than ever before. “Share of eyeballs” for richer content is growing, which makes sense given that motion and sound can make for a more informative or engaging user experience
Growth in Internet video consumption, arguably the highest form of content production value now available, has been increasing rapidly for some time. In 2011 alone, it increased by approximately 45% over the year before. This trend will continue. After all, when developers are technically capable of doing something (3-D anyone?), it tends to scale rapidly.
The implications of this law for content producers are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the content that is produced will be more involving, and this will increase message penetration, and thus the likelihood of further brand engagement.
On the other hand, producing such content will be more time consuming and resource intensive (e.g., video equipment, editing software, skilled creatives, etc.) than the written word. This means more and more content will need to be outsourced, at least for those organizations that have not made the capital expenditures to make such production possible in-house.
Again referencing the recent Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs study, 41% of those queried found that producing the kind of content that engages prospects/customers was their biggest challenge. This percentage will likely go up as technology — and the production value of content — continues to advance.
We’ll be back later this week week with the fifth and final new law of content.
Image via rationalwiki.com.
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