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By Nick Rojas
The World Wide Web has granted the ability to create and distribute content at a rate never before achieved in human history. In 2008, The University of California, San Diego
published a report that showed American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. A zettabyte, almost defying comprehension, is one billion trillion bytes, that’s a one with 21 zeros added. This data shows that the average American consumes 34 gigabytes of content and is exposed to 100,000 words in a single day.
Some estimates place the number of social media users in 2014 as high as 1.82 billion people. As the number of eyes on social media pages has grown, so has the demand for content to fill those pages. Search Engine Optimization is a field currently exploding in an effort to meet this demand. But is there such thing as too much? Too much content for readers to possibly consume? Well, industry influencer Mark Schaefer believes so.
It's been two years since Mark Schaefer declared that content shock is here. Since that time B2B brands have continually increased their marketing budgets while technological advances like ad blockers threaten to disrupt the industry.
Still the problem of content shock remains. There’s an overwhelming amount of free content on the web - far more than any rational human being can consume. As a result, people have become increasingly selective about the content they consume. Internet users are coping with information overload by scanning faster and reading with less intensity than before.
This, in turn, makes it harder for B2B brands to reach their audience. To continue connecting with prospects, marketers will have to continually refine their niche. Yet, they face another problem.
