Insights into Content Effectiveness

As a followup to last week's blog post where we discussed the various types of content that can be used to promote ideas, products or other business elements to your networks, I'm please to read this week that leading marketing group: Marketing Sherpa have released some very helpful research which has provided great insight into what types of content are and aren't working for businesses out there today.

Webinars and webcasts head the list of effective platforms with a staggering 92% of respondents claiming that they find the tool to be very effective (49%) or somewhat effective 43%), whereas podcasts that  have the same audio but no visual component was still rating at 79% but scored a modest 19% for very effective and 60% rating it as somewhat effective. Clearly this analysis highlights the importance of the visual aspects and reinforces the fact that so many people still rate visual learning as their preferred learning style.

The other extremely interesting fact from this recent research was that social media platforms came in last with a total score of 82% but again with only 18% of respondents saying that they found the modality to be highly effective and an additional 64% feeling that it was somewhat effective.

How are we to read this? Does it mean that in the real world social media doesn't work as well, or is it that it's more effective within certain markets than others or is it that businesses on mas despite have taken it up now, are still far from truly adept at using it effectively?

Well I believe that there is a little truth in all of these statements. To begin with social media is not as so many businesses believe analogous to sales promotion activities that are automatically meant to stimulate an immediate and significant spike. Quite the contrary social media is a relatively slow process where you be=ring things to a boil slowly and businesses that try to accelerate this basic tenant often see less than pleasing effects.

Secondly I do also believe that some markets are better suited to social media than others.  B2C for example is a more natural fit than B2B, and within specific markets their is a great intrinsic appeal than others.

Finally do many businesses still grapple with social media and how to use it properly. Quite simply yes and the key issue continues to be a lack of strategic planning in place that drives the tactical aspects.

Suffice to say that as marketers the good news is we have many options available to us these days and in truth each option has it's respective strengths and weaknesses that can be explored more fully another time.
For now it's probably enough to say that for the balance of 2013 and beyond the key will be to get involved with what ever options you feel will best suit you and your target audience. The transition from not effective to somewhat effective to very effective will happen naturally over time with experience and training.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.