The Cultural Content Report 2022
Hello team Cultural Content
Last week we launched the Cultural Content Report 2022.
We wanted to learn how the sector plans and evaluates content and what the key barriers to success are.
169 organisations participated from all over the world (thank you if you were one of them). You can take a look at the full report and webinar in the link below, and read on for a few of the most pertinent findings from my perspective.
If you’re one of the (55) new subscribers who joined during the report launch – welcome. The body of this email may not be news to you. Skip to the end for some previous articles including a post with Louise Cohen (who was also on the webinar) and one of mine looking at what we’re ultimately trying to achieve with our audiences by creating content.
Highlights from the report
There isn’t enough time in the day
The biggest challenge facing those working in content production is finding the time. Relatedly…
Digital staff are a content bottleneck
“It’s hard for the digital team who have to funnel the entire organisation and so many projects through themselves and be part of everyone’s work in a way that other departments just don’t”
Museum, UK
Of all the survey data we presented in the webinar, this seemed to resonate the most.
Those responsible for digital content are generally a small number of individuals who have to filter and coordinate content from across the organisation at large.
Digital expertise is spread thinly
Compounding the bottleneck problem, staff responsible for digital are looking after lots of different types of content; from podcast production and social media to web content.
These are all quite different skill sets. It’s unlikely that the same person who is a champion TikTok creator is also going to be excellent at creating a Search Engine Optimisation strategy for your website.
But very often it’s a small number of individuals attempting to create content that cuts through the noise in multiple different media, each ideally requiring specialist expertise.
Incidentally, the types of content that people feel most confident about – video and photography – are also the ones most likely to be outsourced. The implication seems to be that in-house teams are stretched and, as a result, not feeling confident about their ability to deliver against everything in their in-tray.
SEO seems relatively overlooked
One of the interesting findings for me from this report was that SEO seems to be a little underutilised.
We asked respondents to rank which of the various tools they had and used. Most respondents had things like a content plan and style guide, but other things (like a channel-specific tone of voice guide) were less common.
By far the least common of the tools listed was an SEO plan. This builds on other findings in the report around the weighting being towards short-term content rather than evergreen.
Whilst this type of content is important, doing it to the exclusion of evergreen does set content teams up to keep having to ‘feed the beast’.
For instance, content created for social media is unlikely to deliver many gains a month after you posted it. But, done right, the results of a successfully implemented SEO strategy will build organically over time. That will enable serendipitous discovery of your content from audiences that are interested in and are relevant to particular topics and niches you can speak to.
Based on the report findings, we’ve created the following:
Recommendations for content success
Create content that's closely aligned with your organisation's overall purpose and strategy. Be clear about what these are.
Think about what activity you could give up so you can focus on your most impactful content types and channels.
Use light touch checklists and processes to ensure content remains accessible, discoverable and fit for purpose.
Keep investing in longer-term success. Whether that's evergreen content, reusable assets, or transferrable skills.
Use data but don't overcomplicate it. Know what's popular with your audiences, what they share, and what moves people to take action.
New to the newsletter? Try these past posts 👇
Here’s one with Louise Cohen, a fellow Content Strategist at One Further. In this post, she draws on her time as Head of Content at the Royal Academy and describes two content projects. Contains: Miss Piggy and (separately) ham 🐷.
Here’s a past post from me looking at who we reach with different kinds of digital content and what we’re ultimately trying to achieve with it. Contains: A Matrix.
If you’re not completely sick of surveys, I’d be interested to find out a bit more about the balance between those interested in website content versus social media. It’s useful for planning future Cultural Content’s and what balance to look at in forthcoming posts.
If you’re reading this and enjoying it but aren’t already a subscriber, do sign up. We’ve been going a little under a year and are coming up for 1,000 subscribers, which –considering the net of content professionals working in the cultural sector is quite a select group – I’m pretty chuffed with.