In a world where nearly every business, nonprofit and individual is creating online content, it is easy to become overwhelmed. From Facebook alerts and Twitter notifications, to comments, likes and shares, it can be challenging to prioritize where to best allocate one’s attention. For businesses and nonprofits alike, content overload can be especially challenging – how can one share enough content to remain top-of-mind amongst stakeholders without becoming bothersome? The answer is simple: know the signs of marketing TMI.
- – Your email open rates are dropping
- – Your social media is stagnant
- – Media are skipping over your news
Email open rates, and the corresponding click-through rates for associated content, offer valuable insights into what content is resonating with your database of contacts. Consistently monitoring this data is particularly important for honing your company’s or cause’s email marketing and overall content strategies.
In order to glean optimal insight from your email marketing analytics keep a careful eye out for trends – do emails sent on Wednesdays yield higher open rates than Mondays? Do video links consistently garner the most click-throughs? Do quarterly newsletters have consistently higher open rates than weekly action alerts? And, most important, is increased frequency of communication yielding lower open rates?
While one could assume the latter is tied solely to frequency, be sure you have taken the time to modify your email subject lines, tighten up your body copy and make your content more visual before assuming that decreased open and click-through rates are being caused by a higher volume of communication. As we’ve said before, the more data you have to inform your strategy, the easier it is to make slight but meaningful tweaks as opposed to rebuilding from the ground up.
Is your content garnering less engagement? Have you noticed a decline in the volume of new ‘likes’ and follows? On platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, in particular, it’s easy for good content to go unnoticed. Sometimes, it’s because an update was deployed at the wrong time of the day and other times it’s simply because people are overwhelmed by the volume of information coming from your company or cause.
If you find yourself with a stagnant audience size and diminishing engagement, cull through previous content to notice the nature, packaging and timing that previously proved successful. If you’re continuing to follow the rules of engagement that previously proved successful, take a careful look at how the volume of content you are creating and curating has changed over time.
No matter how carefully you plan your media relations strategy for the week, month or year, there are always pop-up news opportunities that demand one’s attention. While it is important to seize these timely opportunities to further one’s expert position in the marketplace, it is equally important to ensure your company or cause isn’t overwhelming the media with content. If you disseminate a few news items each month, it is likely media (especially weeklies and monthlies) will end up with more than one of your news items in their backlog at the same time. This may prompt them to skip an announcement or two so that all news remains timely and their blend of content sources are fair and balanced. If you find more of your news is being skipped than printed, evaluate how newsworthy the information is and assess whether information overload may be contributing to your lack of coverage.
While there are many variables which impact the success of one’s marketing campaigns – timing, concept, competition and relevance, to name a few – keeping your radar up for the signs of information overload to make sure your brand is garnering positive ‘oh mys’ rather than begrudging sighs of TMI.
