What are the latest content marketing trends?
Creating and marketing of content are two swords hanging in the same sheath. They need to be intertwined but also make sure not to scratch the other. For a better response to your content, both creating and marketing play an essential role individually as well as together. The more effort you put into creating, the more your content climbs up the stairs of relevancy. Meanwhile, marketing helps in reaching the topmost step and attracts an audience. Balance is the most necessary element here. With a poor marketing strategy, even a well-structured content can fail to provide the needs of users.
The improvement in technology has made it more manageable for creators to have a greater reach. But it has also increased competition in the market. And it is predicted to change the way content marketing works in the near future. Before stepping into the business, you need a proper online marketing strategy. So what are the trends that you should be ready to face? We have collected all possible content marketing trends for you.
- Do your research well
As we have explored the dark pits of the market to curate this list and provide you with the most useful information, you, too, have to make sure your audience finds your content relevant and valuable. No one has time to read cliché and fluff. All your information should be sophisticated and speak to the user on an individual level. This is called personalized content. You should start engaging the user by requesting data and then providing them with the content they need. A report from Forrester indicates that 92% of marketers have seen an increase in personalized marketing.
Name and an email is a good start as it is. You can email the user information about the types of content you offer and track their responses to further help them by personalizing the content according to their needs.
- Stand out with your content in the market
Whatever your topic or your content may be, the market is always saturated with it. That is, everyone is riding the same boat and creating the same content. Stuffing keywords is an age-old trick. It does not help your organic rankings increase anymore. In this race, for more clicks, more exposure, and more successful marketing, you need to stand out with your content. This requires diversity, content, and creators. Brands with diverse content creators can reach a more diverse audience who relate to a specific creator and thus engages in your brand.
For content diversity, pick topics that are in demand but also neglected. Give your employees authority and let them write or make content on whatever topic they feel will receive the audience's attention. This generates diverse amounts of content and will help you reach the starved audience. Answer the questions which are never highlighted and are often lost in trending queries. This has proven to be a good lead generation strategy.
- Explore the spectrum
The rainbow is said to have seven colors but is often observed to contain hidden hues. Similarly, the content marketing world may seem to have the same old cliché content but actually has a variety of options available. Written blogs and articles are obvious ways of creating content. You can offer your services via many other types of content, such as audio, video, images, etc. This will open the doors to the parts of the market, which are yet to be conquered.
Diversified methods allow you to reach the millennial generation who prefer videos and infographics over texts for making decisions. These formats are colorful, tell a story, and include movements that engage the users and make them stay on your channel. Step up the game and your organic ranks by joining hands with visual content marketing. This also makes your content portable and user friendly.
- Internet and its digitalized world
As the great web of the internet spreads, it connects the world. Digital marketing has been a part of the scene for a long time now, but with the change in algorithms and system advancements, it has gained a power that cannot be reckoned with old strategies. Ads, searches, and variety, everything needs to be upgraded. As the internet takes up most of a device's space, you need to make your content compatible. This means it should be available on whatever device the user searches from.
Voice search has entered the market as a strong competition space. It accounts for 20% of all searches and is growing day by day. With new technology and software, searching for content has become much more comfortable. Audio content is the star in this space, and to secure your ranks, you need to be mindful of your keywords as the user can now clearly state their intent and requirement. Voice search can turn the tables in your favor when included in your digital marketing strategy.
- Social media
Social media platforms have risen as a brand new marketplace featuring millions of opportunities at your fingertips. Many applications and websites are providing special features such as sponsored advertisements to promote your content. A step ahead in the world of digital marketing, social media marketing provides a broader range of audiences with the availability to upload different kinds of content on a single platform. Some of the major social media applications that brands can use to promote are:
- YouTube
- Tiktok
- Snapchat
- Vimeo
You can use these sites along with your website to upload ads or direct content in the form of video, images, audio, and writing.
An essential factor of social media is User Generated Content (UGC) and influencers. UGC helps with connecting with your consumers as they provide you with raw, factual, and trustworthy content. It ensures that your users are heard and enables you to build a community for the brand. This community features experienced long term customers who are now a part of your journey.
Influencers, on the other hand, are paid reviewers of your brand and product. They can make different content depending on your service to influence their viewers and followers to try out your services. Distributing your services among influencers creates a web where they spread the information in unreachable corners of the audience. But, you need to be mindful when choosing your influencer. Focus more on quality than quantity.
- Artificial intelligence surpassing human strategies
Google has powered its systems with RankBrain; an AI produced algorithm. It curates data and content for users, which is more relevant and helps with long-term queries instead of off the topic, shorter, useless content. It is pulling better results to provide its users with the best. As it has changed the way data collection and SEO works, it calls for a change in the marketing process as well.
The ultimate solution to fight AI is to use machine learning. It can figure out the useful data and content for the user and help in passing algorithms. Marketers are now looking for ways to generate automated content. In the future, we can witness content being produced through robotic algorithms as well. This will change the whole process of online content marketing as well as creating.
- Communication is important
Interaction comes last, but the most crucial trend in the marketing society. If you create content solely focused on a topic and forget the factor of engagement, users might leave your page hanging in their tabs. As informative content attracts people's curiosity, interaction is required to keep the curiosity sparked until the end. Live videos, Q&A sessions, campaigns, and events are the way to reach the user's heart and fill it with your content.
Showing them behind the scenes and revealing the process conveys your sincerity and makes it easier to receive feedback on what the users expect. And these responses can be further used to improve your strategies. Hence, interaction is the key to better business.
These are only a few marketing trends that will continue to grow throughout this year and next year and possibly after that too. They do not bring massive changes but represent clear ways to change your content marketing so you can attract new leads. These can help you improve in your ongoing business and secure your position in the ever-growing market.
Learning why these trends matter and how you can apply them to your content marketing strategies is the only task you have to ace. The market tends to change every day, and so does the algorithm. Among these changes, you need to keep changing your methods and the quality of your content. After all, nothing compares to the quality. If your content is good enough and serves all of the user's intents, it will automatically show up on the first pages, in turn, increasing your organic rank with every click.
86% of B2C companies use content marketing as a part of their strategy (marketing insider group), out of which 21.88% of the marketers in the US and Canada use content marketing (workstream). The market is competitive, and you need to buckle up with the best you have got.