Content at Scale vs Content Velocity: Can You Have One Without the Other?

Everyone wants to know: how do I get a ton of quality content, crazy fast? Content scaling, which requires you to crank up your content velocity.

When the GPO Content Crew attended (and spoke at, woot woot!) 2022 Content Marketing World, “content at scale” was THE buzzword. Ohhh, if only the organizers had met ChatGPT then! Their schedule would’ve flipped upside down! The conference featured a handful of sessions about AI content tools, and those sessions were less about artificial intelligence and more about achieving content at scale. 

Everyone wanted to know — how do I get a ton of quality content, crazy fast? 

The answer? Content scaling, which requires you to crank up your content velocity.

What’s content velocity? 

Content velocity is the amount of content your brand produces in a given time. It’s quantifiable. I’m talking numbers, wordy birds. Calculate your content velocity by tallying up the number of content pieces you’ve published within a timeframe. Example: “Brand A produces 10 content pieces/month, while Brand B produces 5/month.” Brand A has greater content velocity than Brand B. And now our dear readers are having flashbacks of middle school math word problems. 

Content velocity doesn’t have to be fast though it’s most often associated with speeding up, not slowing down content efforts.

What’s content at scale? 

Content at scale isn’t a metric. Instead, it’s a marketing technique that helps you achieve great content velocity. Now, content velocity doesn’t always produce content at scale—the concept itself isn’t inherently fast. Just like a car isn’t inherently fast unless you’re slamming the gas pedal. However, content at scale always leads to great content velocity. 

The general consensus is that when we’re talking about content at scale, we’re talking about many, many content pieces. 

Amine Rahal, CMO at Regal Assets, writes in Forbes that “to compete in today’s online attention economy, you have to create valuable content at scale. This means hundreds, or potentially thousands, of pieces of original content every month to keep your brand at the top of your customers’ minds.” In other words, turn up time!

The digital asset management tool, bynder, notes, “Content at scale means producing high volumes of high-quality content quickly and efficiently—while always maintaining focus on quality rather than quantity.” Again, let’s get turnt.

Phrased a bit differently, content scaling is the ability to create and publish a lot of content in a short amount of time to ensure you maintain a consistent presence. 

Sounds great, but content scaling is “notoriously difficult to implement,” writes Copysmith, for many reasons: 

• Burnout on all fronts. Coming up with new ideas, executing them, and staying motivated takes work!
• Brand dilution. It’s tough to maintain your voice when you’re writing/reviewing so much content. Enter, burnout manifesting in blasé content. 
• You might be a team of one! How does one person plan, orchestrate, execute, and then publish/host hundreds of content pieces?! They try. And then they try to recover from burnout. 

So, how do you achieve content at scale and maintain a high content velocity without hiring a bunch of people?

Content at Scale + Content Velocity 

You need three components to achieve content at scale and maintain a high content velocity, explains Amy Thorne, EVP, Performance Creative Business Lead at Merkle.

• The directing and redirecting of content precisely delivered through technology
• Scaled content production underpinned by great creative
• A customer-centric strategy 

“These three aspects working in tandem,” Merkle writes, “enable moments that connect to experiences and, when nurtured correctly, will build the long-term relationships that brands need to have with customers to stay competitive today.”

I’d add a step before #1, too. Before “directing and redirecting” your content, decide what type of content you want to scale. Knowing the type of content you want to scale will determine the creation + delivery technology. I.e. your tech/content partner.

For example, you might work with GPO if you had thousands of product descriptions to write. We worked with a major vehicle parts manufacturer to create 16,000+ product descriptions for everything from air filters to catback exhaust systems. Each description was unique and paired with vehicle make, model, and year. 

The result:

• 34% increase in product dollars viewed
• 17% increase in cart conversions
• 29% increase in the quantity of parts ordered

Let’s say you need local content for all of your stores and the cities and states they serve. GPO can create and host that content, too. All you need to provide is your brand guidelines for language and design, and your stores’ information.

For scaling blog content with hands-on support, you might go with Crowd Content. To DIY, perhaps you go with Jasper.ai or Writer. There are as many content scaling tools as there are types of content. Pick your flavor. You can’t scale content at a high velocity without assistance from people or technology.

Content scaling technology helps you do what you already do, just faster and more efficiently, so you can maintain a high content velocity. And turn up for more customers!