Quality web content is becoming more and more important. And you don’t have to take my word for it.

Interesting article at eMarketer.com this morning – 2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical.

As I have been saying for a while, the rise of social media is creating pressure for companies to create more and more quality content.

Here is the eMarketer chart.




As you can see, companies which are engaged in social media are using a variety of content types as fuel for their social media campaigns.

Take note of the fact that the #1 position is “branded” content. Not scraped content, not content-mill content.

And the #2 position is Expert Content.

In other words, companies realize that the social media environment demands quality. Without quality, nothing is shared, and your company’s reputation is damaged.

Garbage content may do the trick, for now at least, when attracting traffic from the search engines. But it won’t cut it with social media.

I also really like the questions they asked later in the under the chart:

Marketers should ask themselves five questions about the magnetic content they are seeking to create to determine whether it will be truly attractive to their audience:

1. Is the content unique?
2. Is the content useful?
3. Is the content well executed?
4. Is the content fun?
5. Does the content make good use of the channel in which it appears (e.g., social, mobile, video)?

I agree, absolutely.

If you want to create magnetic content to feed your own social media campaigns, and are sometimes stumped for ideas, learn more about my site, Web Content Café.

Web Content Café’s core purpose is to deliver ideas to help you create quality content in a variety of forms, with particular emphasis on content that gets shared through social media.