Content Maturity Model: How Good Are You at Creating Content and Keeping It Visited?

By Ashutosh Jha → Last Updated on Sunday, May 10, 2020
If there’s a desire for significant progress in the field of content creation (copywriting, content writing), one of the ways to accelerate progress in this area is to understand and adopt various methodologies that improve the knowledge of content creation.

Content Maturity Model

Why Is It Important to Know Different Methodologies for Creating Content?

There are a number of methodologies that describe different ways of creating and improving content and this time, the focus is on a methodology that aims to determine the level of knowledge of an individual or company in the context of the effects of content creation - Content Maturity Model also known as Content Capability Model.

If, for example, you often launch new products or services on the market in your company, you should have in writing defined what are all the steps in that business, i.e. which business procedures and which jobs participate in the business of launching new products or services, including the way content describing of the new product or service is created in that case. That written way of doing a certain job is called work methodology.

When you compare your current methodology of work on certain jobs with the methodologies of other companies doing the same job - you should study whether you can do some things differently according to the experiences of other companies in order to improve the results of your work.

Also, starting a website is the technicality that shouldn't deter you from taking a necessary step towards the growth of your business. You need it to reach and engage your customers. After that, it’s how well your website works to meet your customer’s needs and that starts with the web host. Choosing a hosting service will ultimately determine the fate of your website.

There are hundreds, even thousands of web hosts available, from those that are most suitable to small businesses, such as shared hosting, to providers that can secure uninterrupted visibility of your website regardless of the amount of traffic, such as dedicated and VPS hosting. Looking at different offerings, services, and pricing, there’s also MySQL hosting that might be right for your content creation business because it’s based on a freely available open-source relational database management system - MySQL. To be more precise, MySQL is an essential part of almost every open-source PHP application. 

What Does the Content Maturity Model Serve For?

If we look at the level of our knowledge about content creation today, we can ask the following questions:
  • Have we heard of the Content Maturity Model and do we use it in our business?
  • Do we use other methodologies in our work to improve the way we work?
  • Why would I know that when it looks like some useless theory?
  • I’m interested in HOW to improve content creation exactly (step-by-step), and not to read/watch something that doesn’t give me such answers!
When you look at everything under the phrase “Content Maturity Model“ on Google, see the different images that describe a large number of various ways of observing the level of knowledge about the content creation job.

On this occasion, we’ll list the 3 most important reasons why it’s convenient to use this model of determining knowledge about the job of creating content:
  1. #1 When we figure out how much we know our job, then it will quickly become clear to us, for example, why it’s difficult for us to sell content creation services to companies that are creating a website for the first time. Also, it will become clear to us why we sell content at one price and we can’t charge much more, knowing individuals and companies who charge 10 times more for one text than we manage, at the same time.

  1. #2 More importantly - to know what we don’t know in our business, and what’s the next thing we need to learn to significantly improve the results of content creation. This applies to any individual or company, regardless of the level of current knowledge.

  1. #3 The further we progress, the clearer it becomes to us what we need to learn next in order to continue to progress in our job.
Getting started with the Content Maturity Model comes down to finding a few adequate methodologies from the many on offer that can obviously help you quickly understand what stage of content creation you’re at and what you need to learn next. You may be in different stages of development for different segments of content creation - e.g. you know SEO copywriting very well, but you aren’t good at creating sales content.

If you still think that all this is pure theory, in your case there’s still a lot of room for improvement in your business.

How Much Do You Use Content Creation Strategy in Your Business?

The Content Maturity Model is a strategic framework for understanding and improving the content creation business. Some content marketing experts have structured their works in relation to the ability of individuals and companies to understand marketing in accordance with the level of knowledge they have about marketing.

In these pieces of expertise, the digital marketing strategy is described in such a way that over 90% of individuals and companies don’t use the strategy in their businesses because they don’t see the reasons why they would do it. Only up to 10% of individuals and companies in their businesses understand the ways to create and implement strategies that bring significant business results.

For example, if the owner of a company that sells products over the Internet doesn’t understand why he/she would pay € 500, € 1,000 or € 2,000 for higher quality content to achieve more significant sales results - we certainly can’t sell him/her content creation for that price. If that owner has seen, experienced, and understood that better quality content brings in more revenue - then he/she will invest more resources to create the content.

In order to have an understanding of the value of creating quality content, a company must have a practice of good online results that lasts for a longer period of time to convince those responsible that better quality content brings better effects to the company. Only when the understanding of the decision-makers in the company about the value of creating content begins, only then can more serious development and investment in the content start. 

How to Use the Content Maturity Model?

The Content Maturity Model consists of 4 phases of developing knowledge about the business of creating content - knowledge at the level of primary school, high school, college, and practical master’s degree (such as Master of Business Administration/MBA). 

Typically, maturity models are presented in 3, 4, 5, and 6 stages of development that can’t be skipped:

Content Maturity Model consists of 4 phases of developing knowledge

The Phase of Not Understanding the Content Creation Function

It refers to 50% -70% of individuals and companies on the web worldwide, which mostly don’t do business through websites but through platforms such as Amazon, Booking, Facebook, Instagram, etc. For these individuals and companies, creating content comes down to creating images and descriptions of products and services.

At some point, these individuals and companies begin to understand that their success on the platforms depends on the quality of the display of products and services, but the question is when that moment happens? A large number of companies operate very successfully in this phase of development and never move to the next phase. 

The Phase of Variable Content Creation Results

It’s characteristic of about 90% of website owners, or a total of 20% to 40% of all individuals and companies that use the website. This phase of the development of content creation quality is visible in variable results of the created content, where there isn’t yet enough knowledge to determine why some content “went well” and some didn’t. Only when the company starts creating content that brings good results on a regular basis, conditions are created for the transition to the next phase of improving content creation.

In order for a company to move from this phase to the next phase, the average time of its duration is between 2 and 5 years - if the company is focused on improving the effects. Most companies never get out of this stage of development. The minimum duration of this phase is about 6 months.

Content Effect Optimization Phase

It’s characteristic for 7% - 10% of individuals and companies that do business online. In this phase, intensive optimization of content in relation to sales and promotional effects, possibilities of informative effects of content, visibility on search engines, etc. starts. At this stage of development, the main people in the company begin to understand the reasons why it’s important to create a content strategy, and then the implementation of that strategy slowly begins.

In order for a company to move from this phase to the next phase, the average time of its duration is between 4 and 5 years - if the company is well focused on improving the effects. Most companies never get out of this stage of development. The minimum duration of this phase is about 3 years.

Content Effects Integration Phase

It occurs in 1% to 3% of companies online and is equally represented in companies that have online sales goals, as well as in companies that have online branding goals. The main feature of this phase is the merging of different proven content creation strategies (integration) and their implementation in relation to the characteristic (specific) classic and online business goals (omnichannel). At this stage, promotional effects are very well known in relation to different content formats, their use through different communication channels, ways of creating different types of content effects, etc.

Conclusion:

The better we understand what stage of our own development we’re in, the better we understand to whom we can sell our services and why we don’t need to and can’t do that in some cases.

Stages of Knowing the Characteristics of Own Business of Individuals and Companies

Content creators who are in the first two stages of development very often, through their ignorance, create additional problems for the companies that hire them. So-called “experts” and “gurus” are in the 2nd phase of development, meaning they managed to get good results several times and then, they thought "THAT’S IT!" They are so wrong.

The characteristics of individuals and companies that sell services with a higher level of knowledge of their business (which are in the third or fourth stage of development) are very different from the previously mentioned:
  • In the beginning, they sell their services more expensive in relation to the effects of what they can do.
  • They explain very well what they do, how they do it, and what can be expected of them.
  • They specialize in individual areas because today we live in a time when each segment of content creation is a special science that requires a lot of knowledge from practice.
  • Clients can easily monitor the effects of this work and understand the results of these activities.
  • These individuals and companies are also recognized by the fact that they often don’t have time for new clients (individuals), and companies are rapidly hiring new employees (without firing other employees). This happens because they do their job well.
Companies and individuals from the 3rd and 4th phases of development, who hire content creators, know at the beginning when they should hire, why they hire them, and what they can expect from them. It’s very rare for them to hire individuals and companies who know less about creating content than they do.

The previous paragraph is also the answer to the question of why those who can’t charge much more for their services than the price they charge and know that those prices can be much higher - basically have to improve the quality of their work much more.
Ashutosh Jha

Ashutosh Jha is a professional blogger, Blog and IT Consultant. He writes about Blogging, SEO, Making Money, Internet Marketing and Web Design.
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