While attending Content Marketing World (#CMWorld) in Cleveland this week, we had the opportunity to attend an all-star panel discussion called, Quality vs Quantity: How Much Content is Enough? How Good Does it Have to Be?  

The content marketing pro panelists included:

• Joe Chernov, Kinvey
• Heather Meza, Cisco Systems
• Rob Murray, Skyword
• Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion (River Pools and Spas founder)

The panel, (and this was no shy panel), was moderated by Michael Brenner from SAP. They passionately, and at times, heatedly debated content marketing topics including the hot topic as to whether quality vs. quantity is most important. To answer that, here’s a recap of the discussion, and then you can choose what side of the fence you’re on.

Quantity vs. Quality – Which is better for content marketing?

Joe: Quantity. You can create something awesome, then have to go back and take 3 months to create your next great thing. What happens during that time?

Marcus: Quantity. What is “good”? Today, someone might like it, tomorrow not so much. It’s intimidating for people who are too afraid to create content because they think it must be epic. Let quantity lead to quality. Content marketing is not launching a rocket. Just do it.

Heather: Quality. If your content is full of noise and is crap, people will run from it (bounce). It’s a balance.

Rob: Quality. Your company content standards and quality guidelines will dictate what is good. It’s an on-going process. You learn from what you’ve done and you can do more from there.

What is the main objective of content marketing?

Rob: We recently surveyed 200 marketers, and they replied that engagement, then brand awareness followed by lead generation are the main objectives.

Heather: The power of content marketing is lead generation. Content Marketing fuels the sales funnel.

Joe: Marketing’s job is to get the sales team enough leads and let them sell. Generate awareness.

Marcus: Your company’s job (and that of your content) is to be the best teacher and facilitator for your customers.

Should Content Marketing Be Forced to Prove ROI (Return on Investment)?

Marcus: Yes. If we ever want this industry to move forward. *Note: His blog has generated over $2 million in sales for River Pools and Spas. That’s some compelling ROI.

Heather: Everything is measurable. If we use the right data, we should be able to prove ROI for our content efforts.

Joe: How many shipwrecks do lighthouses prevent? Who knows? Yes, content marketing will need to prove ROI, but revenue can’t be the only metric we measure.

Rob: Yes, most marketing efforts are required to provide some measurable return.

How Much Should We Spend on Design? How Pretty Does it Need to Be?

Heather: Your content needs to be readable, recognizable, searchable and shareable.

Rob: It must be relevant and digestible.

Marcus: Perfection is the death of all good things in marketing. It can be good enough.

Joe: Pretty gets shared and consumed, but balance it.

Brand Standards – How Much Should We Focus On Them or Break the Mold?

Joe : I quit my job because of so much focus on brand standards.

Heather: We get brand fatigue because we see everything we produce. We have to experiment. Don’t be afraid to switch it up.

Rob: It depends on what brand you are. Red Bull may be able to take more risks than a B2B company. You won’t get quality if you don’t have brand standards.

Marcus: I’m going to tell a story… there’s a cloud computing company with twelve employees. We spent an hour brainstorming questions their customers have about their product. Then we had all twelve employees spend 90 minutes for three days answering every question in the form of blog posts. It didn’t matter that the posts were from twelve different people because the content was so useful.

As you can see, even within the panel, there were mixed opinions about quality vs. quantity and on many of the other issues we face as content creators. What’s your take? Agree with one of the panelist? Or have a different point of view? Share in the comments.

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