Content marketing stands out from other subsets of marketing because of its focus on — you guessed it — content. That’s the touchpoint between a brand and its audience. With this piece, we want to address the factors that influence the heavy mix of text and design in every content marketing effort, and even the ones that don’t.

You may think, ‘How much power can content hold? There’s so much more that goes into shaping a brand’s online presence!’ Then, how about the fact that 70% of consumers familiarise themselves with a company through their content online — specifically blogs — rather than through advertisements?

But content can be positively impactful only if you understand what works when, and implement it accordingly.

First, let’s take up the ones that do:

Target audience

All the latest statistics are practically screaming at marketers to include visuals in their content creation efforts. And while the presence of design has become a requirement of sorts, its extent is still determined by the consumer in question.

One study suggests that older consumers (aged 55 and above) prefer text-heavy content such as research reports, email content, and news articles. On the other hand, design-heavy content such as infographics and social media posts is seen to appeal more to those in the 18-24 age group.

Platforms

Platforms greatly determine the kind of content you share, since they cater to different sections of consumers.

For instance, social media platforms tend to lean towards design-heavy posts. Research conducted for the Facebook pages of 100 brands found that 80.2% posts were visual in nature and were responsible for 92.15% of all conversations with consumers.

In contrast, given the more discerning audience it is looking to address, a tech website such as Wired would find itself greatly reliant on text-heavy content.

Here, consumers aren’t just looking to peruse snackable content but also develop opinions based on well-researched insights.

While that broadly covers what should determine your content creation, here are factors that shouldn’t affect whether you create text or design-heavy content:

Industries

You’d think that working in a sector that is reliant on data insights would mean developing only text-heavy content. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Consider My Gold Guide. Despite being an authoritative source on all things gold, it continues to find design-focused ways of creating and distributing data. This infographic on industrial gold serves as a typical example of the same.

Interestingly, design-heavy content might be comparatively more important to sectors such as finance or real estate, given that the information they’re looking to convey is heavier in nature.

Device of consumption

It has become a necessity to make content mobile-friendly, considering that 57% of all Internet traffic is generated from phones and tablets. Moreover, Google may soon shift to a mobile-first index, which gives greater priority to mobile-optimised content.

Therefore, it no longer counts if your content is oriented to design or text. What matters is that you ensure its ease of consumption.

The bottom line

We get it. The pressure to stay ahead of your competing brands and stay on par with consumers is tough. And it may tempt you to push out the same content for different requirements.

However, going the extra mile to consider the context in which you’re releasing your content will prove beneficial in the long run.