How Much Time Should You Spend to Produce Good Content?

So, you’ve finally begun working on your startup and are now on your way to market your brand. Certainly, you are excited to meet new customers and clients and rake in all that profit! 

If only it were THAT easy. 

Unfortunately, it would take more than just setting up a social media account and posting regularly to find success in this crowded, modern, digital business landscape. 

We at Influence Vibes advocate for creating great content that will help attract customers and build a strong online brand while also scaling and scoring well on the Google search engine results page. 

Creating good content, however, takes time. 

Time is of the essence. 

To find success, a marketer should be organized – and this is where time management comes in. 

In strategizing your campaigns, you always want to be time-bound. This allows you to plan ahead while also becoming flexible enough if you foresee that you won’t beat deadlines. 

Of course, the time spent to create content can be relative, and it may depend on the following: 

1. The amount of information you need to produce. 

Are you doing skyscraper content? Or just a simple social media post? 

Regardless of what you’re trying to do, the amount of information needed will obviously determine the time to create content. 

Nowadays, there is an online movement for creating shorter posts. In fact, Medium explains that 7-minute posts capture the most total reading time on average. 

Steve Rayson, from BuzzSumo, writes: 

“The average shares for long form content are only higher because there is so much poor-quality short form content, and this drags the average for short form content down,” says Rayson. 

“Inherently long form is not better, in fact many of us prefer the author to take time to make content shorter. I did an analysis of the posts of the top 100 Mar/Tech blogs and 81 of the 100 most shared posts had less than 1,000 words. Short form can be very powerful.” 

2. Difficulty of the subject matter. 

Are you working on a very technical industry? This might determine the complexity of your articles. 

Technical articles tend to have more traction as they are very industry specific. However, it only gets more challenging to stand out in an industry like this. Think of the IT industry for example. While it is very technical, there could be a lot of opportunities to stand out with thought leadership articles, which can put your company at a very advantageous light.
 

3. Amount of research needed. 

Despite having the information literally on our hands with the internet, research can be tough, as you’d need to verify each source you have. Make sure to cross reference all your sources – and don’t rely too much on Wikipedia! 

Proper research can also lead to creating more backlinks and references for your page, making it a reliable of information that your potential audiences can always turn to. 

4. Writer skill level. 

Are you writing the content yourself or are you hiring writers under your wing? Are you checking on how you’re implementing SEO strategies within your article?

This will obviously depend on your writers’ individual skillsets, as well as their experience with writing content dedicated to your niche. 

If you’re working on a highly technical, long form, article, and you assign one of the interns for it… don’t expect them to turn up with the content anytime soon! 

5. Editing. 

Reading, proofreading, rereading, and editing is a crucial component of content creation. No matter how good a writer is, all writers need a second set of eyes to spot any errors in the copy, from punctuation mistakes and spelling to grammar and proper references. 

If you still have doubts about your article, ask a close friend or someone else OUTSIDE your business to read it for you. Sometimes, all it takes is an outsider’s point of view to get the edit right. 

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We find the above to be workable criteria for gauging your time to determine how long you can create content. However, do note that everything will vary, and hours spent will totally be different from another company. 

Just make sure that when you’re writing, you stay consistent with your brand, including your brand language, and your references are up to date!