7 Illuminating Stats About the Future of Content Marketing

Social Fresh is hands down one of the best marketing conferences out there. I started attending in 2010 and having been coming back every chance I get. Why? Because not only does this event bring together the best and brightest speakers across disciplines, but it also somehow continues to attract the most interesting and fun attendees from around the globe. Engaging speakers, smart attendees, gorgeous venues, oh, and did I mention the snacks? On. Point.

This year I had the honor of joining the Social Fresh stage for the first time. I never thought the event could get better for me, and somehow it did. Seeing that additional layer of organization and polish behind the scenes only pulled on my heart strings even more. I’m a Social Fresh fan girl, what can I say? But the other interesting part about being a speaker was that I found myself paying even closer attention to the other speakers to see what resonated with the audience.

What I learned was that some of the most jarring statistics were often the most interesting, and provided a framework for the problem that each speaker was trying to solve. Although it was nearly impossible for me to pare down all of the awesome speaker insights into one blog post, I’ve done my best with these seven shocking and illuminating statistics about the future of content marketing—and really, marketing as a whole.

“We spend 8 hours per day consuming media.” – @faris

Though Faris was the closing speaker at Social Fresh, his statistic is really what made us all descend on Orlando for this event in the first place. The fact that we’re spending one third of each day on media only furthers the point that marketing matters, content matters, and social matters. And it’s not something to be taken lightly.

“Creating content is the most time-intensive task for social media teams, taking up to 18.5% of the day.” -@socialfresh

To further Faris’s point, Social Fresh’s latest research shows that teams are spending the majority of their time on creating content… as they should. But because social media and content marketers are doing so much themselves, this does NOT include the time they need to be spending on strategy and promotion.

“51% of marketers cite a lack of time/bandwidth to create content as their biggest challenge.” -@jessostroff

However, there’s a disconnect here. Marketers know they need to be creating more, better content, yet they’re not able to with the time constraints they have in their job. The content process is taking too long. That’s the main reason I developed my presentation for Social Fresh—to cut down on the time it takes to plan and create content. You can see the slides from my presentation here, and I’ll be honing in on this more in the coming weeks and months to make a clear, organized process that you can adopt in your own team.

“93.3% of top marketers are using video for awareness, followed by conversions and sales.” -@jeremarketer

Video, video, video. This was the name of the Social Fresh game this year, and we all know it’s only growing. Of the marketers who are actually using video (which isn’t all of them, I must remind you), the vast majority of them are using the media to raise awareness. That’s because video is the perfect way to show your audience who you really are. It allows you to get behind-the-scenes, give a tangible view of what your product or service really does, or show how fun/amazing/authentic your brand really is. Once you can hook them in through an engaging video, you can move more quickly through the sales funnel. Here is the full chart of how marketers are using video today:

“67% of followers will share your content if it’s good.” -@HeatherATaylor

It seems simple, but if you put something great out there that resonates with your followers, there’s a much higher chance that they’re going to engage with and share it. So don’t waste your time putting out mediocre content. Take the time and the energy to create something really good every single time.

“People trust their friends & family five times more than a brand message.” -@amyswrite

Don’t expect your fans and followers to believe everything you say right away. You need to build that trust organically and over time, the way you would any other personal relationship. The other thing about this stat that’s important to remember is that if you can build a fan, you can create an advocate. Advocates will encourage trust among their relationships for you so that you don’t necessarily have to connect on that individual level with every single person who follows you. Treat your fans well, and your advocates better.

“People spend three times more time and engagement on video that is live.” -@prsarahevans

So, it’s not just about creating amazing video content. It’s about creating LIVE videos during events that your audience will want to engage with. That’s the beauty of live video, after all: Fans and followers can engage in real time and be rewarded for their efforts by you on the spot. People love being heard, and live video is an incredible opportunity to listen and interact with your audience in new ways.

If you take nothing else away from this year’s wildly successful Social Fresh conference, remember this:

• We need to get more efficient in creating amazing content.
• We need to embrace video.
• We need to connect with our fans on a deeper, more authentic level.

See you next year, Freshmakers!