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50 Crucial Content Facts to Make Your Content Make a Difference Now
A collection of revealing content facts, statistics, and quotes to shape your content vision and strategy.
Content Consumption
There are 3.54 billion internet users worldwide, and more than 20% of them—721 million—are from China. — Internet Live Stats
21% of Americans now report that they go online “almost constantly.” — Pew Research
Online sales in China amounted to $581.61 billion in 2015, surging 33.3% from the previous year, and are expected to grow 20% annually by 2020. — Forbes
65% of all adults online use at least one social media site, while 90% of adults ages 18-29 utilize social media. — Pew Research
70% of webpages viewed in Indonesia are viewed via smartphones or tablets. — Hong Kong Trade Development Council
Indonesia: 78 million Facebook users (fourth largest), 29 million Twitter users, or 5,787 tweets per second—an increase of 1,403% in just one year—and the first and sixth most active Twitter cities in the world (Jakarta and Bandung). — Social Memos
There are 500 million active monthly Instagram users uploading 95 million new pictures and videos per day; 122 million Flickr users sharing 1 million photos each day; and 1.79 billion active Facebook users posting 350 million new photos daily. — Social Pilot
Only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% will consult a search engine. — Hubspot
18% of content users report “doing nothing” after viewing content, 35% conduct more research, and 17% share, ContentWRX data shows.
Content Vision + Leadership
18% of content users report “doing nothing” after viewing content, 35% conduct more research, and 17% share, ContentWRX data shows.
“Your content vision must be descriptive, something that your team, your executives, and your stakeholders can easily understand and even visualize.” — Colleen Jones, CEO of Content Science
87% of 101 survey respondents said a content leader who provides vision, direction, and inspiration is critical to a content team’s success. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
Global spending on content marketing is predicted to hit $300 billion worldwide by 2020, more than doubling its 2016 total of $145 billion. — PQ Media
B2B marketers have increased their content marketing budget from 25% to 32%, while B2B marketers have allocated 28% two years running. However, the most effective B2B marketing teams allocate 42%. — B2B Content Marketing 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends
“You first need to show up (and keep showing up) and be of service over everything else, when and where your content teams need you … this means leading from the front, the side, and often from the back; coaching the team as you go and being flexible.” — Michaela Hackner, Capital One
81% of survey respondents reported an environment that encourages creativity and innovation as very important or critical to a content team’s success. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
“If your organization is serious about maturing your content capacity and practice, you will need content leadership at individual, team, and corporate levels.” — Colleen Jones
Content Teams
“Your content vision must be descriptive, something that your team, your executives, and your stakeholders can easily understand and even visualize.”
– Colleen Jones, CEO of Content Science
“What was helpful for us was to sit down with other content teams and walk through the data in as much of an objective framework as possible and go through the external and objective reporting that comes from ContentWRX and other tools to see how we might solve 1 or 100 content issues.” — Kelley Graham, American Cancer Society
73% of respondents reported that content team members are motivated by opportunities to grow and develop. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
95% of people on content teams rate a high level of trust of the team leader as very important or critical to team success. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
Employees at Starbucks, IBM, Reebok, and Dell are encouraged to speak on behalf of the brand to vendors and customers. And this is smart business according to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, showing people trust employees more than CEOs.
56% of 101 content team members surveyed say ambiguous goals and micromanagement cause them to become disengaged. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
82% of content team members surveyed say buy-in from internal and external stakeholders is very important or critical to a team’s success. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
“Four key roles are key to maturing your content capacity: Content strategist, content designer, content engineer, and content analyst.”
— Colleen Jones
Only 27% of content team members surveyed said their rate of creating content was how they gauged success. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
Content Intelligence + ROI
“If you have important content questions your data isn’t telling you (and you likely do in the engagement category), work with your IT and web teams to put the correct infrastructure in place.” — Mike Barton, Adobe
“Our data-focused and collaborative approach resulted in far less escalations and emotional pleas from our stakeholders and demonstrated that we were not reducing content just to reach a target, but rather to change the culture for how we execute marketing.” — Scott Rosenberg, Intel
Only 5% of B2B marketers rate their organization’s efforts to track ROI as “very successful,” according to the Content Marketing Institute, and 28% of B2B marketers do not measure content marketing ROI.
IBM notes 80% of all data is unstructured—text and even numbers that are not in a data model.
Inc. shares 70% of internet users want to learn about products through content versus through traditional advertisements, and Swift Networks reveals 79% think the mobile content and ads they see from retailers are irrelevant.
Revenue for global content marketing rose 13.3% in 2014 to $26.47 billion and are expected to rise to $54.25 billion by 2019. — PQ Media
Only 35% of content teams surveyed said they evaluate content ROI. — Content Science, Content Leadership Study
70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. — Curata
Content Channels
Deloitte Global predicts that virtual reality (VR) will have its first billion dollar year in 2016, with about $700 million in hardware sales, and the remainder from content.
The average ContentWRX score rose 7.45% on mobile/tablet in 2016, indicating mobile content experiences are improving.
88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours. — AppSheet
75% of in-store shoppers use mobile devices while shopping, and as many as 25% of shoppers use mobile devices to make purchases while in-store. — Adweek
75% of the Inc. 500 companies have active Twitter accounts. For the Fortune 500, it’s 83%. LinkedIn remains the most broadly used social network among the Fortune 500, with 93% of the companies analyzed maintaining an account. — UMass Dartmouth
89% of consumers report simultaneous use of the TV and smartphone. — Deloitte
Toyota’s app for its augmented reality car has more than 750,000 downloads on iOS and more than 250,000 YouTube views for videos related to the app.
Content Technology
80% of large companies report having a Chief Marketing Technologist role, states ChiefMarTec.com. Organizations with CMTs or equivalent positions are generally ahead of their peers in digital marketing maturity, Gartner reported.
59% of B2B Fortune 500 companies use marketing automation, and 63% of companies that are outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation. — Lenskold Group
Sales and marketing alignment can improve sales efforts at closing deals by 67% and help marketing generate 209% more value from their efforts. — Marketo
Only 10% of respondents to an Altimeter Group survey said their content tools integrate with other functions.
Companies who fully invest in modern personalization will outsell their competitors by 20%. — Forrester
Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. — Nucleus Research
82% of marketing departments lack the data framework to unify technologies. — CMO Council and Tealium
There are more than 2.2 million apps in the Apple App Store, but the average user uses only 27 apps per month.
Personalizing even a single aspect of the customer experience takes sustained investments in customer data and analytics—including spending on data management and analytic tools. — Gartner
“With the growing use of voice-activated systems, ‘conversational’ content design will also become increasingly important.” — Joseph Dickerson, Microsoft
Companies who put data-driven personalization at the center of marketing and sales decisions improve ROI by 15-20% or more. — McKinsey
Source for All Content Facts: Content Science Review
