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The growing problem of content chaos

  • 3 min read

Content Chaos? Like algae blooming in a nutrient-rich lake, the amount of content being produced by companies today is growing at an exponential rate. How much content is being created, which functions within the business are creating it and how much of it is being exposed to customers is, for the average business, an utter mystery.

Being polite and mundane, this could be described as inefficient. A more accurate description would be ‘chaotic’.

To understand what this chaos looks like, let’s take a look at a mid-sized B2B company – we’ll expand this to B2C companies in a moment.

This average B2B company has all the obvious content platforms. It has its website with the all-important blog. It has a Linkedin page, Twitter feed and even a Facebook page, and newsletters are sent out regularly (in a correct GDPR compliant manner!)

Over the years it’s added a bit of digital confusion with a specific microsite to support some thought leadership positioning as well as one for its annual customer event. All pretty common stuff.

But wait, that’s just the marketing content. Throw the net wider and you’ll quickly discover a wealth of additional content in terms of sales and service content.

If you cast a similar lens over an average B2C company then the array of content, channels and functions creating content widens still further. There’s a lot more outbound content being created and the range of channels is far broader. There are almost certainly more functions creating content, more regularly, and there are also a lot more external agencies involved.

In a world where the average company is increasing its content investment and the breadth and depth of its content creation, this matters a lot.

If there’s a lack of control today, this is only going to get worse and where it will hurt the most will be with the customer.

The chaos will create confusion with the customer and a disjointed, frustrating experience. It will certainly create even greater unnecessary cost and what is a problem today will become a source of considerable pain in the not-too-distant future.

Worryingly, these average companies are very much the norm and as global content investment looks set to double from 2016’s levels of just over £200bn to an eye-watering £400bn in 2022, it is time to take action and turn content chaos into content control.

To start to unravel this content chaos see what Odyssiant can do to help.