“If something goes wrong, I’m the first to admit it. … If something goes right, well it’s likely to lose me. It’s apt to confuse me. It’s such an unusual sight.”
Paul Simon wrote that. It makes me think of content marketing these days.
Last week I had a chance to view the just-completed 2013 content marketing Industry Characteristics Study, co-conducted by McMurry/TMG’s ContentWise and the Custom Content Council.
The study itself is proprietary for CCC members, but I can sum up the results in a single word: More.
How’s that for an executive summary?
Marketers are spending more money—and using a bigger share of the overall marcom budget—to make more content in more forms with more strategic focus and more social engagement.
What kind of outputs can we expect from this season of more?
The CCC has specifically outlined several key trends in the growing adoption of content marketing tactics, including:
- Corporations spent $43.9 billion on content marketing in 2012, a 9.2% increase over the $40.2 billion reported last year.
- 62% of marketers surveyed now report using video in their content marketing. Branded video is quickly catching up with web and print as one of content marketing’s most common form.
- Social content has been identified as the most frequently used form of marketing, with 81% of those surveyed creating content specifically for social media.
- Over 40% of survey respondents plan to increase investment and output in Web, social and SEO content in the coming year.
Clearly these are the Salad days of the content marketing business. Into them we should pour our hearts’ blood, our intellectual best and our wisdom.
The more we do, the more sustainable will be what comes next as our new discipline matures: the good old days.
[Image: Flickr]
