Focus on the quantity of your content, not the quality

Ashley says: “Start focusing on quantity and not so much quality, when it comes to content.”

Is that the opposite of what most people are preaching at the moment?

“That’s my point. Even I have preached not to focus on quantity for many years, but we’re now starting to see so many brands halting with how much content they’re producing and the type of content they’re producing.

From a resource standpoint, so much is being put into developing 1 or 2 pieces of content that are trying to be strong pillar pieces – and there’s no guarantee that your content is going to work. There’s no guarantee it’s going to generate traffic or leads, or whatever your primary conversion metric and goal is.

Instead of just putting all of your resources into one content basket, focus on producing several different types of pieces of content. That’s where the quantity comes into play. Then, get as much data as you can and analyse what topic worked, what content type worked, and what distribution metrics worked.

That’s when you can confidently put all of your eggs into one basket because you know that this topic got the most conversion, this type of content medium hit the goals that you wanted, and these distribution methods got it in front of the most users.”

If you’re doing something that most people aren’t doing, are more people likely to engage with it?

“Yes, of course – and you don’t know that until you try it. Brands are often taking so long to produce one piece of content because it has to be absolutely perfect. We’re finding that those not-perfect videos and not-perfectly crafted blog posts are actually doing a lot better. It’s giving more of that human aspect.

You’re getting content out there faster and you’re able to see what’s resonating and what’s not resonating a whole lot quicker. Then, you can pivot your content strategy and dive into what’s really working.”

Is it possible to be strategic and plan the creation of imperfect videos?

“It’s definitely something that you can plan. I was interviewing someone on my podcast the other day who made a video for TikTok that was just someone on the team recording a page on their website on their phone. It was just through the cell phone, and it was a cell phone video of the cell phone – a meta version of a video.

They got around 20,000 impressions, which was the most impressions they’d ever got from a piece of content on TikTok. It allowed them to test a brand-new network for them (TikTok), and they were also able to get a bunch of traffic to their website.

If they had gone through a production crew and spent weeks developing the script and the storyline, they wouldn’t have found out so quickly that their audience is on TikTok, they can get traffic from TikTok, and they don’t need a huge budget to create content for it.”

Should people mix up the styles of content that they’re making?

“Yes, but in the testing phase. That’s not something that you want to be doing for years. It is something that you will need to do frequently because how users engage with content, and the kind of content that they like, changes on a regular basis.

I can now go to YouTube and, if the video is not in 4K, I’m out. That’s my own user preference. For the brands that I’m watching, at the very least, the video quality needs to be decent to keep my attention and have me watch the full video.”

How do you know what type of content to test first?

“If you’re starting completely new, with a new network like TikTok – and you’re trying to figure out if it’s going to be a viable source that you should put resources into – start by creating a couple of videos and publishing them. Then optimize them, making sure that you’re checking all of the right boxes, give it a little bit of time, and then collect the data. That’s what an initial strategy would look like.

From a blog post perspective, you need to be creating content on your site regularly, that content needs to be authoritative and about your specific niche, you need to be experts, etc. That’s where scale comes in – but you’re not just going to throw things at the wall and hope they stick. You still need to brainstorm topics and have a topical strategy to determine your primary topic and your pillar piece of content. Then, you want to try and create 10-15 other pieces that support that idea, while also showcasing the brand as an expert.

In those 10-15 pieces, you’ll find 2 of them that really stick and give you a lot of traffic. That’s the kind of information people wanted to know more about. The others are just supporting pieces. It doesn’t mean you need to delete them, but it does give you an idea of direction. Moving into the next pillar piece of content, you now know the kind of info that they’re looking for.”

What software do you use for collecting data and what metrics are you looking for?

“Go into Search Console and GA4, then look at how much time people are spending on a page, and where they are going after that.

I’m always trying to figure out the user journey. What was the referral source? Where did they come from when they landed on that piece of content? How long were they there? What internal links did they click on? What pages did they go to next? What was their entire path?

That will help you understand, as a marketer, where you could have missed the mark. If they didn’t spend that much time on it – or they didn’t go to any other pages and just bounced back after that – then you didn’t address what they really needed. You didn’t give them a reason to stay with the brand.”

How long is this test process and how do you know you’ve found a winner?

“It really does depend on how much traffic that specific website’s getting on a regular basis. If you’re getting 100,000 page views a month, then you’re going to be able to collect data a lot faster.

If it’s a very small brand that’s stretching for 1,000-2,000 page views a month, it may take a few months before you have enough views on the content to say whether this was a successful piece of content or not, and whether you need to pivot the strategy.”

Do you have preferred metrics for the different stages of the buyer journey?

“It depends on the client’s goals. Most goals are going to lead to some kind of conversion path. Revenue is what pays bills and keeps the lights on for any business, so that’s usually the ultimate.

However, there will be a lot of campaigns that help with the BoFu, MoFu, and ToFu stages of the buyer journey, where traffic is the most important metric. How much traffic did this piece of content get? Then, what happened after that? That’s usually the harder metric to collect data on because it depends on how the content is organised.

Is there a conversion opportunity within that piece of content? Do you have tracking metrics inside your internal links to identify that they went from this piece of content, signed up for a consultation call, and then eventually bought? That path is going to be a lot harder to track, and you need a really robust tracking system and analytics set-up in the back end to identify that.

In most cases, though, identifying what pieces of content are getting traffic to the site, and traffic that’s staying on the site, are great metrics to begin with.”

When you’ve found the content that works, do you stop producing all the other types of content to focus on that?

“It depends on your ultimate goals, your conversions, and what you are testing for. If you’re testing a new distribution method or network, then you need to continuously test that because trends change on a very regular basis.

You’re constantly going to be throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, and that may change monthly. It really depends on the platform or network you’re producing new content on.”

Are you seeing any trends in content production happening in-house or being outsourced?

“It’s a strange mix right now because of AI. A lot of in-house brands are leaning towards using AI and having a Head of Marketing manage the AI mass-production of content. Then they’re falling on their faces with terrible content that’s getting no traffic, isn’t helpful, and no one wants to engage with it.

Then they realise they need to rework this strategy and start wondering whether they need to hire a content marketer internally or go to an external agency. It’s a very strange environment that I think is going to be like this for a little, while the sparkle of AI is still with us.”

Is it essential to include AI in mass content production nowadays?

“100%. I recommend using it from a work production standpoint and thinking about how to use AI to speed up your systems. We are talking about doing a lot of work. Producing 1 piece of content uses a lot of resources, whether you have a team of 50 or a team of 1.

You can use AI to streamline the project management aspect of it and help with topic ideation. It can help you make sure that what you are producing is going to be a good FAQ section, for example, and that you’ve addressed all of the questions that people could be asking. AI can help streamline a lot of those processes and speed that up.”

Do you have a preferred way to produce many pieces of content from a single piece?

“I have two. I have a podcast, and that creates video content, audio content, blog content, social media content, and short-form video content – all from one episode. The amount of content that comes from doing something like this is immense, while it is also strategically placing you and your brand in a thought leadership space and getting a lot of viewership through there.

Another way to do this is to take any contact form content that you get from your website or your client’s website – any questions people are asking or feedback they’re submitting. Take that, throw it into ChatGPT, and ask, ‘How can I create a topic out of this question?’

Creating sales-enabling content around that one question will dictate a lot of your future content strategy. You can create a walkthrough video to address that question. From that video, you can create short-form content. Then, you can take screen grabs and images from that. The list can go on and on, all from addressing a single question from a customer or potential customer.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“This is something that I preach and I’m still trying to practice: you do not have to be perfect. Your content does not have to be perfect. It needs to be really good. It needs to be polished. It needs to be helpful. It needs to be well thought out, but it does not have to be absolutely perfect.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 100% perfect piece of content in my 14-year marketing career, from any company. There are a lot of really great pieces of content, but nothing is perfect. You’re going to have negative and positive sentiments, no matter what.

Get the content out there sooner rather than later, so you can start collecting data.”

Ashley Segura is Head of Marketing at ContentYum, and you can find her over at ContentYum.com.