Part 4: We’re asking the wrong question about quality vs. quantity

Rachel here! Welcome back to What's Good? (In Content), a six-part Superpath series! In it, as the name suggests, I'll be exploring what it means to make content good, the quality vs. quantity debate, and (hopefully) trying to think broadly and deeply about what makes for good content, and why (or if?) it even matters. If you have questions, responses, comments, or hot takes in response, send them my way!

P.S. I took inspiration for the name for this series from an old coworker who used to say, “Hey, what’s good?” every morning when I got to the office. Shoutout to Taylor: “What’s good?” “Life’s good, I guess.”

What's Good? (In Content) is one of three rotating Thursday series. You can manage which ones you get here.

Perhaps the most perennial debate in content marketing is the question of quality vs. quantity.

But the more I think about it (and the more editions of this series that I write), the more I think that we’re approaching this dichotomy in the wrong way.

When I hear people talk about the quality vs. quantity debate, I notice a few common, core assumptions:

The higher quality something is, the less of it you can make. The lower quality something is, the more of it you can pump out quickly. This is true for overall content programs, as well as individual pieces of content. Essentially: showstoppers vs. slop.

This one is more insidious, but there’s an assumption that quality is the “roadblock” to quantity.

We often ask “What’s the minimum quality we need so we can scale quantity?”

We rarely ask “What’s the maximum quantity we need so we can scale quality?”

Each piece, as well as the whole program, has to achieve the right balance of quality and quantity. For example:

Because we often want to create as much content as possible (quantity), we then have to figure out how to scale without losing too much quality. Put another way, we try to find the minimum quality you need to succeed in a piece (high efficiency) so that we create more output.

I don’t think any of this is necessarily wrong. But I do think it is, at this point, an unhelpful framing of the question.

Because quality and quantity aren’t a spectrum so much as two separate goals. When we think of them as a spectrum, we end up basically asking: “How bad can this be and still be good?”

And to that I say, in the words of Alexis Rose,

We need to balance quality and quantity. But we need to balance why and when we use each, rather than trying to balance them as a spectrum where we need to find a good middle-ground.

I’ve been defining “good” content throughout this series as “content that fulfills its aim or goal.” Both “quality” content and “quantity” content can be good. But they can only be good when they choose (and fulfill, of course) appropriate goals. Because the aim of “quality” content vs. “quantity” content (the why) is different.

The aim of quality-content is that each piece has maximum effectiveness. It doesn’t matter if it takes a while to create because the results are valuable and each piece absolutely achieves its goal. Quality content often achieves a snowball effect, too: the more quality pieces we do, the more effective at achieving their goals they become. Our 100th email newsletter gets more responses, more shares, and drives more signups and trust (or whatever) than our 10th.

As an example, look at the popular Lenny’s Newsletter. Lenny’s newsletter focuses on in-depth, deeply-researched, long-form articles, and has grown from 6,000 to 1 million subscribers in five years. So clearly, he’s doing something right. But even with a million subscribers, and a crew of freelancers and contract support, he still sends on average just 2-4 editions per month (including guest posts!). But listen to what he writes about his guest posting process, for example:

“To make [guest posts] work, I spend 10+ hours with each guest author editing, refining, and tightening their post. We go through 5 or 6 iterations before we get to something that hits the bar I set for this newsletter. And it’s working. Most of my most popular posts are now guest posts, and most of the guest posts are far better than my posts. It takes a lot of work, but it pays off.”

“It takes a lot of work, but it pays off,” is the core ethos of quality-content. You’re spending a lot of effort on making each piece as good as it can possibly be and trusting that it will pay off.

The aim of quantity-content is not that every individual piece be increasingly effective, but that the volume of the content together teaches us something, helps us achieve something, or shows us what “quality” looks like or how to get the best results.

It can also give us more shots on goal, especially during experimenting or learning phases. If you’re not sure yet what works, or you’re not in complete control of the distribution, audience perception, etc., then 100 shots gives you more chances for a hit than 10 shots.

In short, we use it when the collective result of all that content is greater than the sum of its parts somehow.

I think of the classic tale of the photography professor who split his class into two groups. The first group just had to produce one fantastic photograph for an A+, while the other group had to take 100 photographs to get an A+. Guess which group, in the end, had the best photographs? Of course, the second group did. The more practice, the more shots (literally), the more opportunities they had to create — and learn how to create — something that really worked.

I do a similar thing when writing for LinkedIn (for myself or for clients).

I aim for quantity and writing a lot of things very quickly so I can test out ideas, see what resonates, see what formats work, see what gets shared, hone and shape ideas over time, reach and connect with a lot of people quickly, etc. etc. I don’t want to ship out slop — there are boundaries — but I don’t need to aim for maximum clarity, depth, authority, or effectiveness on every single post. The results are in the sum of the whole, not each individual piece.

Both of these are good goals! However, in general, we have conflated these, and that has created a categorical error:

In the end, we get the worst of both worlds by trying to find a good middle-ground, rather than leaning into the goods of each in their appropriate places.

So, how do we balance these appropriately?

Quantity content should (usually) come first. We can use it very effectively when we’re trying something new, need a new approach, are expanding to a new audience, etc.

It helps us learn quickly what works and why, so that we can scale back quantity to make quality — very effective — content. Content that is more and more good, content that fulfills its goals better and more effectively.

We do a lot at first to learn; then we do less, better.

To give some clear comparisons:

It’s worth thinking about how often we aim for each of these too.

I think most of us probably default to one mode or the other, so the key is understanding which you tend toward and balancing your default mode with the business goals you’re after.

TL;DR:

Does it matter if content is good or not?

Of course it does. Good content fulfills its goal, and if your content isn’t fulfilling any goal, then why are you making it? It’s not working for you or your audience, it’s just noise.

But does it matter if content is high-quality or not?

That, my friends, depends on the aim.

Pick the goal first.

Then choose the right approach at the right time: quality for quality-ish goals; quantity for quantity-ish goals.

Go all-in on whichever one you’re choosing, and you can get good results from both.

- Rachel