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50 Crucial Content Facts to Make Your Content Make a Difference Now
A collection of revealing content statistics and quotes to shape your content approach.
Content Consumption
The internet is now doubling in size every two years. — The Content Advantage
Source: The Content Advantage
There will be 5.3 billion total Internet users (66 percent of the global population) by 2023. — Cisco
Source: Content Omniverse Fact Sheet
85% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011. […] 15% of adults are “smartphone-only” internet users, meaning they own a smartphone, but do not have traditional home broadband service. — Pew Research Center
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Forrester predicts marketing message volume will increase by 40% in 2021 as brands continue to compete to be top-of-mind to consumers amid a slow recovery from the pandemic. — Forrester
Source: Content Marketing Fact Sheet
Nearly 40% of senders have simplified their emails to increase authenticity and nearly a third have also adapted their tone to become more human. — Mailjet
Source: Email Fact Sheet
The amount of time adult social network users spend on social media platforms—which grew by 13 minutes in 2020—will remain higher than before the pandemic, at 1 hour and 35 minutes per day in 2021. — eMarketer, US Social Media Usage 2021
Source: Social Media Fact Sheet
The majority of online video is now watched on a smartphone, and mobile is forecast to account for 72% of the growth in spending on online video advertising. — Forrester
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Nearly two in three American adults (64%) say fabricated news stories cause a lot of confusion when it comes to the basic facts of current news and events. — Pew Research Center
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
In 2021, 41% of Americans ages 12 or older said they listened to a podcast in the past month, up from 37% in 2020 and 9% in 2008. — Edison Research and Triton Digital, The Infinite Dial
Source: Content Omniverse Fact Sheet
Millions of blogs get published every day. The average blog post is now 1,416 words, up from 808 in 2014 — Orbit Media Studios, 87th Annual Blogging Survey
Source: Content Marketing Fact Sheet
Content Operations
“If a company does not elevate content to a cohesive core competency, then the company is likely to suffer problems that make content ineffective and that make its operations inefficient at scale.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: The Content Advantage
44 percent of digital leaders collect and analyze customer data at least weekly to identify new ways of winning over buyers, compared with just 16 percent of laggards, which, on average, dig into customer data only monthly. — McKinsey
Source: The Content Future
Leaders who communicate a clear vision for content are 5 times more likely to report success than those who do not. — Content Operations Study, 2021
Source: Content Operations Study
There are five levels of Content Operations:
1. Chaotic, 2. Piloting, 3. Scaling, 4. Sustaining, and 5. Thriving.
Forty-six percent of organizations are at levels 1 and 2, the earliest stages of content operations maturity. Compared to our 2017 update, more organizations are at these low levels.
— Content Operations Study, 2021
Source: Content Operations Study
“To scale operations for your content marketing program use data to optimize your content planning and production.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Organizations that report being very successful with content are more likely to be at a higher content operations maturity level. More than half of the very successful are at the two highest levels of maturity: 41% were at level 4 and 14% at level 5. — Content Operations Study, 2021
Source: Content Operations Study
“[To mature your content operations] you need to know what you’re trying to achieve, always be willing to learn and iterate, and figure out what your team does best.” – Lymari Morales, Associate Dean for Communications and Marketing, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Source: Content Visionaries: Content Operations Maturity at the Bloomberg School of Public Health
“Our content operations research has repeatedly found that content leaders and their teams face no shortage of challenges. A content playbook helps overcome most of the top challenges by bridging strategy and execution.” — Content Science Review
Source: What Is A Content Playbook?
“When it comes to voice, the most successful organizations: Have executive buy-in, Make stakeholders aware, Train content teams and partners, Set up accountability, and Use technology to help automate adherence and evaluate impact.” — Content Science and Acrolinx: Scaling Voice Report
Source: Scaling Voice Report
Content Intelligence + Effectiveness
Just 35% of content professionals regularly evaluate content impact and success. — Content Science
Source: Content Operations Study
“We find that when there isn’t a lot of thought to strategy…about 20% of content is having 80% of the results.” — Colleen Jones, Interview with MarketMuse
Not knowing whether your content is working for your customers or users brings real costs and risks to your business, including wasting money on content efforts because decisions are not guided by evidence. — Content Science
Source: Evaluating Content Effectiveness
A content measurement plan provides a framework for measuring success that you can use across your organization to inform decisions around strategy and execution. By having this in place, you can: Validate your content strategy and support meaningful conversations around it, Configure your owned channels for effective analytics, and Identify gaps in analytics you may need to fill. — Content Science Review
71.7% of people who said that content [in a digital experience] was not relevant indicated the content was too general. — ContentWRX
Source: The Content Advantage
“Channel analytics can give you more specific details than web analytics about who your [content] audience is. For example, Facebook Audience Manager and Twitter Audience Insights can tell you demographics, interests and more.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Content professionals who reported the ability to evaluate content’s impact and the freedom to experiment with content options were significantly more likely to report content success. — Content Science
Source: Content Science, Content Operations + Leadership Benchmark Study
People who reported that content was easy to find were significantly more likely to report that it was accurate, relevant, and useful than were people who experienced difficulty (but eventually found the content they needed)—86.2% versus 39.4%. — ContentWRX
Source: The Content Advantage
Content Channels
The average journalist receives over 5 pitches per day but writes fewer than 5 stories a week, only a quarter of which come from pitches. When it comes to pitches, 91% of journalists prefer pitches under 200 words. Nearly half (46%) prefer 1-200 words and a quarter (25%) prefer under 100 words. — Muck Rack
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
Email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available. — Hubspot
Source: Email Fact Sheet
The global conversion rate—people who visit websites to convert (buy a product, for example)—still hovers around 2 to 4 percent. That rate range has not changed since 2003. — Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly Index
Source: The Content Advantage
Marketers who send fewer than three emails receive a reply rate of just nine percent. But if a marketer sends between four and seven emails, their reply rate jumps to 27 percent. — Woodpecker
51% of consumers are willing to use artificial/virtual reality (A/VR) technology to assess products. — Nielsen
Source: Content Technology Fact Sheet
By 2022, the influencer marketing industry could be worth up to $15 billion, up from as much as $8 billion in 2019. But, the Federal Trade Commission is concerned that “fake accounts, fake likes, fake followers, and fake reviews are now polluting the digital economy, making it difficult for families and small businesses looking for truthful information.” — Federal Trade Commission
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
More than half (55.4 percent) of internet users use their mobile phones to purchase products online and seven in ten (69.4 percent) say they use shopping apps on their mobile devices—be it a phone or a tablet. — DataReportal
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Eighty percent of marketers find influencer marketing to be effective. And, 89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. — MediaKix
Source: Influencer Marketing Fact Sheet
Misinformation is a top 10 threat to growth. — PwC 24th Annual Global CEO Survey
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
Content Automation + Personalization
“AI is the only way we’re going to be able to deal with the fact that the demand for content is increasing exponentially. We’re going to have to automate the production of certain aspects of content.” — Noel McDonagh, Dell EMC
Source: The Content Advantage
Companies fully invested in online personalization will outsell companies that have not by more than 30%. — Gartner
Source: The Content Future
Creating personalized messages and experiences requires intimate knowledge of customer journeys, relevant content that drives action, and technology that helps deliver and measure experiences. Brands need to be extremely thoughtful in how they personalize their content today…focus on showing customers you can help them first. – Gartner, Rethinking Personalization for Maximum Impact
Source: The Content Future
22% of organizations are using AI or machine learning in some capacity related to content. This is up from 15% in our 2017 study. — Content Operations Study
Source: Content Operations Study
73% of executives say their organizations have embarked on a path to intelligent automation, up 58% from 2019. Those organizations range from piloting, with 1 to 10 automations (37%), to scaling, with 51 or more automations (13%). — Deloitte
“When we engineered and architected GovHub, we kept content fluidity as a goal. Even though websites are our primary way of delivering information, we need to be future-ready. Now you don’t need a special Alexa skill to read georgia.gov content because Alexa or Google Home automatically reads information from georgia.gov or GovHub hosted websites. The way we changed and modified our content made it machine visible and readable.” — Nikhil Deshpande, Georgia’s Chief Digital Officer
Source: How Georgia’s Digital Office Overhauled Its Approach To Content Management
“Advanced personalization technology can enable you to offer content based on your customers’ behavior, their roles, their preferences, or a combination.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Executives are most likely to say process fragmentation and a lack of IT readiness are the top barriers to scaling intelligent automation. — Deloitte
“Since launching [personalized content in the Weather Channel’s mobile app], we increased performance in double digits across all priority metrics, including visits per user, sponsorship traffic, total impressions, and retention.” — Lindsey Howard, The Weather Channel
Source: Forecasting What Mobile Users Want: A “Sunny Day” Strategy for any Type of Weather
Almost half of organizations are trying to offer personalized content experiences, up from 38% in our 2017 study. 65% of organizations that offer personalized content experiences report using behavior criteria such as previous content viewed. 50% report using demographic criteria. — Content Operations Study
Source: Content Operations Study
“Marketing AI can take you a long way, but it’s up to humans to do the work of making the content, promoting it well, and connecting with an audience.” — Brandon Andersen, Ceralytics
Source: AI Is Not The Silver Bullet to Defeat Your Marketing Monsters
If brands fail to offer a personalized experience, 45% of consumers say they’re likely to take their business elsewhere. — Segment
“Top growers … leverage brands effectively by not only listening to the voice of consumers but listening in a tailored way to serve them with personalized offerings backed by real-time data analytics and tailored pricing and promotion.” — McKinsey
“Automation will in some ways make the lives of content professionals easier (push-button omnichannel content publication) but it could very well go wrong too (creepy chatbots replacing talented writers). Content professionals will need to focus where their true value is—as an article by McKinsey states, we need to ‘take the robot out of the human’, and work to be tech-savvy enough to make automation work for us, humans.” — Marie Girard, IBM cloud AI software
Get these facts on presentation-ready slides over at Content Science Review
