• by John Miller , February 21, 2014

As you consider your organization’s content strategy, perhaps the biggest inflection point is quantity versus quality. How much versus how good? It can be very difficult to do both, particularly for organizations with limited resources.

How much matters

Consider this statistic, courtesy of Hubspot: 92% of businesses publish multiple articles per day, every day, acquiring customers directly through their blogs. That points to the idea that quantity does matter; frequently updated content gives the audience a reason to come back over and over again. Theoretically, the more they’re visiting your site, the more engaged and attached they become. So quantity becomes very important.

But not if it’s at the expense of quality.

Because a lot of crap is, well, just a big pile of crap.

If you plotted out quality vs. quantity on an X-Y axis (X=Quantity, Y=Quality), the great media brands would be in the upper right. Getting into the magic quadrant should be a goal of your content strategy, but actually achieving that will take time. For most marketers, there is a decision to be made, because they simply can’t have both. So, should you focus on creating great content or on creating a lot of content?

This has to be a balancing act, but if you truly must choose, choose quality. Every time.

Once upon a time, search engines rewarded you for quantity. The more you could stuff keywords into pages on your website, the better. That resulted in an avalanche of nonsensical content that was of no use to anyone, but gamed the system and lined the pockets of SEOs. However, those days are dying as Google changes the game and reworks its algorithms to reward high quality content.

High quality content gets shared more often. It’s far more likely to break through and find an audience. And then once it finds that audience, it’s going to hold their attention and spark conversations that ultimately turn into relationships. That high quality content is going to perform at a far higher level than that quick blog post that the Internet’s river of content washes away within hours.

Of course, creating high quality, really effective content takes more time and more skill. It’s a decision, and then it’s a commitment. If you’re just launching your content marketing effort, your focus should be on creating high quality content -- as Jay Baer says, “marketing so good people would pay for it.” If you’re already creating content but not getting the traction you want, take a closer look at the quality of what you’re doing.

When we speak with companies, sometimes they’ll say something along the lines of “there’s already too much content out there -- why should we just make it worse?”

Of course, you shouldn’t make it worse. You should make it better. That means getting off the sidelines and producing high quality content.

Your customers will thank you for it.