There’s one big question on every content marketer’s mind: what’s more important – quality or quantity? You’re aware of the fact that you have to produce a lot of content, so you’ll keep the audience coming back at your site. You have to submit guest posts, publish social media content, and write many comments on online forums if you want to attract more visitors. If you focus on producing extremely high quality, you won’t be able to stay on schedule.

What do you do? Do you sacrifice the quality for the sake of quantity, or do you reduce the number of posts published so you can maintain the quality?      

The trick is in finding the balance. You have to make content really work for you.

Unfortunately, we can’t suggest a specific level of quality to maintain. It can’t be measured. The length, tone, format, and all other aspects of your content depend on the needs of your audience. For example,Research by Medium, a blog publishing platform, showed that the ideal blog posts takes the reader about 7 minutes. Since the average person reads 200-250 words per minute, we could set the ideal length between 1,400 and 1,750 words. However, this length doesn’t work for all audiences.

You’ll have to experiment a bit to find that balance that works for you.

Let’s open a debate, shall we? What’s more important: quality or quantity? By the end of this post, you should be able to improve your publishing schedule and get closer to that balance point.

Why Quality Matters

All guides on content marketing keep telling you this: the quality of your content determines its chances for success. But, you often wonder: what’s high-quality content, anyway? What criteria can you measure quality by?

• High-quality content has a human element. Even if you want to increase the quantity for the sake of quality, your decision mustn’t affect this factor. When you read good content, you feel like the writer is talking to you. It seems like they understand your questions without you asking them. You can see that behind this content, there’s someone who knows what they are talking about.
• Uniqueness is another important aspect of quality. You can’t just repeat what other people are saying. There are posts that seem cool, but you realize you’ve already read the same stuff before. That’s called paraphrasing. With this strategy, you avoid the plagiarism issue, but you’re not producing high-quality content. Good content is always based on research, facts, and a personal touch. It has to be unique. That’s exactly why it takes so much time to produce.
• Strong headlines are crucial!

Quality content shows you understand what the audience needs. You’re not wasting their time with useless posts of no value. When someone finishes reading a post like this, they feel like they’ve made an accomplishment. They learned something new and they are ready to take action.

Here’s another important reason why quality matters: Google appreciates it.

If, however, you focus on producing content of extra quality, you’ll have some problems:

• You won’t be able to post too often. Let’s be honest: a 1,400-words post based on heavy research and facts takes few days to complete.
• If you notice that your audience wants more posts on a weekly basis, you won’t be able to meet those needs on your own. You’ll have to hire more writers from services like AussieWritings.com, so you’ll get more content out there without sacrificing the quality. That’s a serious investment, so you’ll have to evaluate how beneficial it will be.

Quantity Matters, Too!       

Since you won’t be updating your website too often if you focus only on quality, you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential traffic. It’s no secret: if you want more traffic and conversions, you have to publish lots of content and you have to do it as frequently as possible.

Here’s some interesting information for you: 61% of the most successful content marketers follow a clear content marketing plan. They evaluated how much content the audience wants, and they manage to attract high levels of traffic by posting frequently. More content gives the visitors more to click through, and it keeps them coming back on a daily basis.

What’s good quantity? You won’t be happy with the answer: it depends. According to HubSpot’s research, the companies that published 16+ blog posts on a monthly basis attracted 3.5 times more traffic when compared to those that published up to 4 posts.

Does this mean you should solely focus on quantity, even if that means producing lousy content? No. If you choose to do that, you’ll have some problems:

• Low-quality content does more damage than good, no matter how often you publish it.
• It doesn’t make your brand look good in the eyes of the audience. When they visit your website, they feel like they are wasting their time. It won’t take long before people start unfollowing you on social media.         
• If you publish and promote too much content, you’ll spam the feeds of the followers on social media platforms.

Strategies: Finding the Balance Point

The key to success sounds simple enough: you have to produce the right level of quality with proper frequency. How do you find that balance? We’ll suggest few strategies for you to try:

1.      Create an Editorial Calendar

When your editorial calendar is well-organized, creating high-quality content on a regular basis will become a routine. You need a clear plan for the frequency of posting, as well as for the types of content you’ll release.

For start, evaluate how much content you’re currently publishing. Try to organize your editorial calendar in a way that allows you to fit at least 3 more posts per month. If you notice you can manage that schedule, keep increasing the frequency whenever you notice your audience wants more.

2.      Hire More Writers

Sooner or later, you’ll need more writers to help you meet the milestones you set. Once you realize you reached the peak of your efficiency, it’s time to get more people in your team.

You can either hire a professional service that’s going to connect you with expert writers, or you can publish an ad and test the applicants to choose the best ones. The first option saves you a lot of time and nerves.

3.      Separate Huge Posts in Few Smaller Ones

This is the best way to get more content without affecting its quality in any way. If the post is too long, most of the readers won’t have time to go through it. In such cases, even content of best quality will remain unnoticed.

Separate the draft for your huge post in few paragraphs. Then, try to get a separate post out of each paragraph. You can publish an introductory piece, which will lead to each part of the series.

Bottom line is: you shouldn’t choose between quantity and quality. Both matter. You need to find the balance that works for your audience and maintain it over a long period of time. Are you ready to make some changes in your editorial calendar?