Page 16 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

discovering a business state I characterize as Content Shock.
Let’s unpack that idea a little because it represents the marketing problem at

hand: There is just too much content and too precious little time for people to
consume it. How does that affect your business strategy?

Content Shock rises

The content/social media/mobile revolution is entering a mature phase. The
factors impacting your ability to cut through and be noticed—namely the amount
of content available and our capacity to consume it—are in transition.

Of course the volume of free content is exploding at a ridiculous rate. There
are many forecasts out there, but most center around a 500 percent estimated
increase in the amount of information on the web between 2015 and 2020. If you
can imagine the vastness of the web today … well, pretty soon we’re going to
have five times that! And some think that number is low, projecting as much as a
staggering 1,000 percent increase in information density in that timeframe!

Do you think it might be just a little harder to stand out in the next few years?
But wait. Won’t a lot of this information be coming from all of these
connected sensors you hear about—the Internet of Things, where the roads are
talking to the trucks and the trucks are tuned to your refrigerator so the store
knows you need more beer? Or something like that.
No. Experts believe about 75 percent of the information increase will come
from brands and individuals. All those selfies and cat pictures have to go
somewhere, right? And they all compete for attention. Nearly every person on
earth is becoming his or her own personal broadcast channel. This is a wonderful
thing for consumers but one daunting wall of noise to cut through for a brand
message.

The consumption side

Here’s the good news: Every time there has been a technological breakthrough,
the amount of content people consume gets a lift.

For centuries, all we had was newspapers and printed books. Then radio
came along around 1920 and the time spent consuming content every day
doubled from about two hours to four hours. Television, the Internet, and digital
gaming all captured more attention, at the expense of outdoor and family
activities. By 2011 Americans were consuming more than eight hours of content
per day, according to Nielsen and other sources.1