Salt & Pepper #12 - Quality vs. Consistency

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Welcome to Salt & Pepper! Salt & Pepper is basically the PromoKitchen equivalent of debate team. The purpose of this monthly article is to open up discussion and conversation on different challenges facing the Promotional Products Industry.

NOTE: Salt & Pepper is intended to foster intelligent dialogue between professionals. This is not a dagger throwing contest. Be honest and authentic, but please also be kind and keep it classy.

In 2016, no one would argue the importance of having a strategy for content marketing. However, when it comes to distributing content marketing, is quality frequency and consistency more important? In this month’s edition of Salt & Pepper, Kirby and Bill share their views on the delivery of content marketing.

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Salt - Kirby Hasseman

If you are creating a strategy for content marketing (and you should), you better focus first on consistency.  Consistency allows you to create credibility with your audience.  They can come to expect you putting out content to them on a regular basis.  It’s part of your contract with them.  If you say you are putting out a new blog post each week, you better do it.  Otherwise you have essentially lied to them and it’s really hard to gain that trust back.

Consistency also helps you IMPROVE quality.  As Seth Godin would tell you, not every post he writes (and he writes every day) is gold, but you need to get through the rough posts (or videos or podcasts) in order to get better.  Consistency helps you better understand your audience and improve what you create.

Finally, a great content marketing strategy takes time.  It takes time for people to find you.  It takes time for you to break through the noise.  The ONLY way to do that is through consistency.  Whether you choose to create every month, every week or every day, the consistent action is what drives home content success. Remember, “A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”  Jim Watkins.

Pepper - Bill Petrie

First of all, both are important and should be considered when developing a content marketing strategy. However, I’ll take quality over consistency every time. Consistency is great, but if you are consistently pushing content to your audience that is irrelevant or, even worse, has no value, you will accomplish nothing. With so many blogs, webcasts, podcasts, articles and other media, people will quickly tune out if the quality of your content is poor. There are simply too many other avenues for an audience to find the quality of information they are seeking. 

For example, take fans of the Cleveland Browns. For years they have been delivered a less-than-mediocre product by the people in charge of creating a winner. Because of this consistent bottom-dwelling product, those fans annually expect a losing team. If you consistently deliver a low quality product, your audience will begin to assume everything you do is of the same low quality. Frankly, that’s not a risk worth taking to ensure consistency. 

Simple consistency will help build an audience, but quality will keep them. Spending a little more time to ensure that your content has real value to your audience will trump consistency every time.