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Content Dilemma: Big Benefits With Big Hurdles

posted on April 8, 2011


We hear it all the time especially in the era of the social web. Strong content planning and delivery help win the day in the Internet space. Of course, there is grandfather of all content phrases “Content is king!” and in many ways it’s a cliché for a reason. Content is critical for online marketing success and people know it but they also know how hard it is to do well.

eMarketer reports on a survey done in March by HiveFire called the Content Curation Adoption Survey 2011 (I have never been a fan of the term content curation. Are we working in an online museum?) and it shows that marketers know the value of strong content creation and distribution.

It’s the reality part of the content marketing equation that causes the simple “Just create great content on a regular basis!” mantra to stumble a bit because, let’s face it, generating high quality content ain’t easy.

In fact, it’s one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole Internet marketing game for companies of all sizes. The word that is preached is that you need to be a content creating machine to win but there aren’t many companies that even know what existing content they have let alone the resources to generate new, relevant, high quality content regularly. The survey went on to examine the biggest obstacles for marketers.

Looking at these reasons there are no surprises other than the first two are quickly becoming more like excuses. I say that because there is ample evidence that content creation has become a critical component of the marketing mix. When something gets to the point where it is a necessary activity vs. something that would nice to do, marketers need to find ways to get it done. If they don’t, they really are not doing their job.

So what are the biggest obstacles that hinder your content creation and distribution needs? Is this area of marketing so important that you need to put other things aside to make the time to get this done or is it something you just wish you could really dive into? Can you put being a content generating machine aside and still succeed online?


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  • http://www.brickmarketing.com/internet-marketing-consulting.htm Nick Stamoulis

    I would argue that it is better to produce content less frequently if it means it’s really good, quality content that provides value to both your company and the reader. The Panda update showed us that low quality content isn’t going to be accepted any more, so being a content making machine isn’t worth it if your content is going to suffer because of it. It is important enough that we need to make time, however. You need time to make something worthwhile.

  • http://debbie-j-carter.com Debbie Carter

    I couldn’t agree more Nick, it’s definitely a case of quality outweighs quantity. How many of the corporate giants have fallen due to the bums-on-seats syndrome which leave value and quality a very poor second.

  • http://www.mlinc.com/ Carolee Sherwood

    The thing about it is thought leadership requires thought … and usually a fair amount of collaboration.

    Though there are tons of tools on the market designed to simplify the act of publishing tweets and status updates, there are precious few designed to take advantage of social communication to assist in the act of identifying topics, assigning tasks and creating high value content.

    We invite people to read about Media Logic’s solution, Zeitgeist & Coffee, which is designed to address this need (http://blog.mlinc.com/web-assets/what-is-zeitgeist-and-coffee/).

    There’s got to be more out there. Anyone know of similar products/services?

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