A new survey has delved into the world of content marketing to discover today’s best practices. The report also highlighted that the age of infographics is on the wane, with poor images and market saturation leading to the decline. In addition, it shows that SEO remains an important aspect of content strategies.

Almost every brand marketing team these days is focussed on content, with the production of high quality material over quantity continuing to be extremely important. Clutch, the B2B analyst firm behind the latest survey, questioned 300 people about the aims of content marketing. Nearly 80 per cent admitted the challenge was to boost online visibility for companies, while the remainder touted lead generation as their top priority.

The founder of Moz, an SEO software firm, explained that SEO and content marketing remain one and the same. Rand Fishkin said that both aspects “very much need each other,” adding: “As far as SEO goes, without content there are no rankings and there is no opportunity to appear in results.” This belief goes hand in hand with the report’s findings, which reaffirm that to find success with content marketing, it is vital to have a strategy. The days of churning out article after article, therefore, are now gone.

This belief is taken into consideration by 89 per cent of survey respondents who said that the amount of content created remains important. For companies building their brand, infographics and product reviews are the content of choice, with 19 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. Meanwhile, for those focussed on lead generation, research and original data, content was most popular at 21 per cent. “The justification is that content that earns social shares typically is formatted for entertainment – list posts, videos, quizzes – while content that gets links and earned media is more informative”, the report said.

Many firms are still creating infographics although this form of media does seem to be on the decline. Mr Fishkin explained that back in 2013, infographics were the go-to content; however, “the age of infographics is dying, and most of them are quite bad,” he said. “The ones that have success do so in a slightly manipulative way. The embed gets linked back with very particular anchor text that takes advantage of search algorithms.”

However, reaching saturation doesn’t mean the end. For example, Brandwatch’s marketing manager of Europe, the Middle East and Asia wrote in 2015 that the huge rise of Instragram clearly shows an appetite for visual content, but there should be a higher emphasis upon the need to focus on quality, and that means content and messaging becomes even more important.

Finally, the report also highlights that Google has made content comprehensiveness a larger priority and, therefore, gives more weight to quality material. It is not a clear cut process, Clutch says, but content marketing strategists need to ask themselves three questions during the curation process; who is it for? Why should the reader care? And what makes it stand out?