Just because there’s more information available, doesn’t mean one can consume more.
Information Overload
Put yourself in the shoes of a consumer right now. Just for a second. Imagine that it’s the 1950s. You consume as much content as you can. You likely frequent your local library. Perhaps you listen to the radio and watch the nightly news. Maybe you also subscribe to, and read the entire, daily newspaper. Maybe your household receives a few magazines every month. That’s about it. There really isn’t a big difference between the information you know is available and the information you can consume.
Now, fast forward to the late 1990′s. You live in a 200-channel television universe, there are multiple daily metropolitan newspapers, and the worldwide web is exploding. Suddenly, there is far more content created than you can consume. Today, I’ve been told, there are an average of 17 new webpages published every second. I can’t consume every single one.
So, what do I think has happened? I can certainly consume more content than I could two decades ago, but no matter how much content is available, I can’t consume much more. And relative to the sheer volume of content available to me, I’m actually consuming a smaller percentage every day.
The Race to Curate
Now, put on your Marketer Hat or your Content Creator Hat again and take a look at the Information Overload chart above. The green line represents the consumer’s ability to consume more content. Yes, it’s gone up – but only ever-so-slightly.
Now look at the blue line (the information available). It’s sky-rocketing and shows no signs of slowing down. The consumer stands no chance of consuming much more of that wonderful content you’re creating than they could yesterday or they will tomorrow.
That means we need to define our roles in this ever-growing world of content creation. In my opinion, this is why we see a huge interest in content curation over content creation. It represents the desire of the consumer to filter out the noise and get straight to relevant, high-quality content, given the limitations on their ability to consume.
The Opportunity
So, where’s the opportunity? Content curation is certainly one avenue to pursue. Anytime you can help your audience find the best content, more efficiently, more often, you’re building trust.
However, in order to be successful at this, your brand must be perceived as a completely objective brand in the marketplace. Otherwise, your consumer has to find multiple curators and still consume more content to ensure they get the ‘whole picture.’ The content curation model is really designed to help consumers more efficiently find relevant content, not necessarily the best content.
The real opportunity here, in my opinion, is to create – and curate – the best content focused on one specific area frequently enough that you become the one brand that consumers look to for this information. It’s the opportunity of proving your brand is capable of creating and disseminating that content across media in a wide variety of formats.
If you’re just creating content for the sake of creating content, you’re not helping your consumers – you’re overwhelming them.
Note: I can’t remember where I first saw this concept. I’m not even sure if I saw the graph somewhere (I might have). If you created this concept or a similar graph, please let me know – I’d love to give you credit! Somehow, I lost it in the information overload.
Agree with you on balancing creation/curation, Drew. And what a catbird’s seat it is if a brand can do the hard and smart work necessary to earn the trust to be that go-to content resource for a particular audience.
While reading your post, I had a mental image of the hockey stick “info available” line not only arcing steeply up, but also angling gradually toward the left as it rises. As if to say, not only is the volume of content growing exponentially, the volume of content that’s less and less relevant to any one consumer and shared-interest community is growing apace. Making it even more valuable if I, as a consumer/community, can find a resource I trust to curate, sift wheat from chaff, etc.
Do you really think people can consume more content than they used to? I think this hinges on a quantity/quality distinction. The depth of people’s knowledge seems to be diminishing (know a lot about less) while the breadth is increasing (Know less about more).
I also think you should distinguish between marketing content and non marketing content. You could argue that there is very little content unaffected by marketing being consumed. As opposed to earlier when a lot of content (like books) were not subject to the same type of commercialization
Josh,
Thanks for chiming in… I think you’re right, in an information saturated market it’s really easy to know less about more, but the real valuable audience is the one who wants to know everything about you… that’s where the highest quality will be found. Hopefully that makes sense.
There is an important distinction to be made between marketing content and non-marketing content I believe that in the new media world (and even under the old journalism models) that all media is influenced somehow somewhere by a brand. I think in the future almost everything we consume will be branded media. If you want to find an objective point of view you’ll have to find two brands to pay for that.
I have a whole theory on this – we’ll have to get some pineapple juice and a beer and discuss it in depth!
- Drew
Great conceptualization of an important concept to kick off a discussion. I have three thoughts unrelated to each other:
1) The small slope of the blue line (content consumption) makes intuitive sense, however in practice I have seen that the number of readers increases and the average page views per article increases the more you publish. We used to blog 2 times a week, now we blog 2-4 times a day, and the traffic never stops growing. Quality is important – this does not mean just pump out a bunch of crap. But most companies I think publish too little and are too cautious when it comes to publishing more and perhaps lowering their standards a tad?
2) The content produced in 1960 was for the mass market. There was no TV show about ice fishing or marketing or anything really specific subject. Today content has become very specialized, so I am now replacing “I Love Lucy” with HubSpot TV or TPL podcasts for instance. Lucy was fun and OK, but I mostly put up with it because I had only 3 choices. Now I have infinite choices and can watch exactly what I want. MOre content might equal a higher satisfaction with the X units of content that I consume as compared to the X units I consumed decades ago.
3) I personally rely on social media to do a lot of the curating for me. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Flipboard, Pinyadda and similar services let you leverage the “reviews” of people you know to find the content that you will like best. This is probably another tool to help me either consume more content or also be happier with the X units I consume today.
Mike,
Thanks so much for the great comment!
In regards to your great points…
1) You’re right if your audience sees you as a great content creator around a specific topic area and you’re also a great content curator in that same area – as you are – you’ve become one of the destinations in the content cycle that your audience consumes – meaning you’re in the bottom category, not just adding to the noise! You guys have done a great job of staying relevant for your audience and you’ll continue to I’m sure!
2) Absoutely dead-on, creating content for more niche-audiences (I call this fractal marketing) is the key to success and you’ve nailed it. Those niche content creators become part of a key content cycle for the audience that wants to consume it. The problem is when you’re trying to be Lucy to everyone in today’s media landscape. It’s hard to pull off – if not impossible.
3) Curating content through your network may actually be far more valuable than branded curation. You’re dead on again – 3 for 3.
Thanks again Mike, see you soon on the circuit I hope!
- Drew
Andrew,
Nice post– I could go on about what I agree with, but that’s boring, so…
…one point I will take issue with is the need for a brand/company to be seen as objective. I don’t think that’s necessary or even desirable, as it is an expectation doomed to failure in many cases. A brand by definition is partisan in some way, so any attempt to deny that has a credibility cost.
What you can do is be honest in portraying your point of view. Be fair, be objective and be helpful, but don’t expect people to see you as impartial. That is enough for most audiences.
Doug,
Thanks so much for commenting! I appreciate your taking the time!
Fair point. I will say that I don’t think there will be much difference in the future between branded media like Nova which is brought to you by Exxon Mobil (as an underwriter) and the future of all media. If I can trust Nova through Exxon to present to me a full hour on the future of solar power, why couldn’t Exxon actually own that and still be objective?
That being said, I think you’re dead-on in today’s market.
Thanks again Doug!
Andrew,
Thanks for the post. What is your source of the graph and what is your definition of information available? Take Wikipedia of the major search engines, for example. Most of their content has been “available”–that is, known–for many years. The access to it online, however, is exponentially faster and more streamlined.
I agree with Mike’s thoughts. We have learned the fastest ways to access information and have also learned to prioritize much more effectively our information gathering in recent years. I can click through those 200 TV channels, absorb the information that I want, and stay “current” with the information that I don’t care about much more efficiently than watching a single half-hour TV show years ago–with a lot more information taken in, also. In that regard, I may not have more brain capacity than before, but I certainly know how to focus better on the portion of the Information Available circle (on your graphic) that matters to me.
Thanks, again, for stimulating this conversation. -Bill
Bill,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Okay, great question – as it pertains to the source of the graph. To be honest, I couldn’t find a data set that would give me REAL numbers as to the amount of content produced from 1950 to today. So my chart is purely invented… it’s really my perception of the market. Sorry about that. It’s more a concept than a reality, I guess.
I’m in agreement with you. Josh also stated that it’s possible we consume more, but retain the same (or similar amount) as we always have.
Thanks again for commenting… have a great day and sorry it took so long for me to respond.
- Drew