Top 10 Content Marketing Trends to Follow
Digital Marketing is constantly changing and evolving, but these trends will be shaping what's happening in marketing in the coming year. These trends will continue to shift marketing efforts towards an online-first mentality while still delivering offline marketing efforts to increase engagement.
When you think of content marketing, you usually picture dull, whitepaper full of text or infographics. But the fact is that there are a wide variety of ways to share valuable information and engage with your target Audience. We've put together a list of the ten most important trends we expect to see in the future of content marketing. Some of these trends may seem familiar, but there's always something new to learn.
The future of marketing is all about delivering content at the right time, to the right people, on the proper channels, and across the right platforms.
That means creating and sharing relevant, engaging, and helpful content wherever customers spend their time online.
If you're looking for ways to make that happen, this list of content marketing trends is for you.
We've selected 10 of the biggest trends shaping the future of content marketing.
By understanding these trends, you'll be better prepared to create the right content, reach the right audiences, and drive the best customer experiences.
Content Marketing Trends You Need to Follow
1 – Personalised Content
Personalised content is highly effective in marketing because it makes the content you share more relevant to your audience. This allows you to:
- Build trust with your audience
- Reach a wider audience
- Create a lasting impression
- Create a connection between you and your audience
Including a personal signature with your content can help you establish credibility. It builds the case for personalisation by letting your audience know your content is unique and personal.
Personalised content helps you reach a broader audience by providing a more personal touch. You can also reach a more diverse audience. Because people tend to prefer to read about and hear from people similar to themselves, a personalised approach encourages more participation in your content.
Personalised content makes a solid first impression. When someone reads your content, they can see that you care about them and their interests, and they can quickly determine whether or not they want to interact with you.
People are naturally curious about the world, and you can pique their interest by creating personalised content. This can create a positive first impression and allow your audience to connect with you.
People want to be recognised. We respond well to the information that is relevant and useful to us, and personalised content can help you engage with customers in a more relevant way than mass-marketed content.
2 – Voice Search Will Evolve
If you've been paying attention, it's hard to deny that Voice Search has emerged as a significant player in digital search. Now, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are all building voice assistants into their devices, and businesses realise there is an opportunity to connect to customers through voice search.
But it's not just about connecting to customers through voice search. Voice search is more than just an option to communicate. It's an opportunity to understand user intent by reading the user's vocal patterns.
Voice search is also a significant evolution in content marketing. As we move toward artificial intelligence, this technology is set to transform how we create and distribute content.
Voice Search Technology Changes the Game
Today, a voice search is limited to simple queries. But with the rise of voice assistants, we'll soon be able to use voice commands to find products and services on demand and engage in complex conversations.
As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, voice search will likely become a more integral part of our everyday lives.
According to a report from Accenture, more than half of all searches will be conducted via voice search in 2022, which is expected to climb to over 90% by 2024.
This represents a significant opportunity for businesses that are prepared to take advantage of this emerging technology. According to a report published by IBM in August 2018, by 2023, there will be about 1 billion “voice-first” searches per month. And they expect that figure to grow to 8.2 billion monthly searches by 2030.
Voice Search Changes Content Marketing
The rise of voice search technology means that business owners should consider how their products and services will be presented when a customer searches using voice.
As technology evolves, businesses must adapt and create content that can be read by voice.
Voice is not just about understanding spoken language. It's also about understanding the user's intents and expectations.
So, to connect with your audience, you may need to consider the following:
- What product or service will you deliver?
- How do you plan to present your information to the user?
- Is your content written for humans or voice?
- What is your tone?
- What does your business stand for?
- How can you demonstrate your company's values and ethics?
These are some questions business owners may need to ask themselves when considering how voice search will impact their content marketing efforts.
But the most significant change will be how businesses connect with customers using voice search.
3 – Diversified Content Brings New Audiences
As technology evolves, so does the way we communicate and consume information. Today's consumers demand more from brands – they want more quality, personalisation, and relevance. This includes diversified content marketing strategies. Many marketers believe that the average consumer only pays attention to less than five per cent of marketing content.
According to a recent Content Marketing Institute (CMI) survey, marketers expect diversified content to make up at least 60 per cent of their total content marketing efforts by 2023. As a result, we're seeing content platforms that cater to different types of content consumers and devices while also providing a personalised experience.
A diversified content marketing strategy includes more than one type of content to meet the different needs of your target audience. Diversified content is designed to reach multiple consumer touchpoints across digital platforms and mobile apps. These may include:
- Email and text messages
- Newsletters
- Social media posts
- Infographics
- Mobile app and website notifications
Diversified content marketing helps to:
- Engage prospects and customers more effectively
- Reach more consumers with fewer impressions
- Keep consumers updated on your company
How to Diversify Your Content Marketing Strategy
Many businesses need diversified content but help to figure out how to get started. Fortunately, diversified content is easy to implement. Here are four simple steps to start building a diversified content marketing strategy.
Step 1. Define your audiences
As you begin creating and delivering your diversified content, you'll need to define who your audiences are and what they want to learn. For example, are you looking to attract first-time buyers or long-time loyalists? Which device types will you deliver content on, such as mobile apps, social media, or the web?
Step 2. Determine your content channels
Once you know your audiences, you'll need to identify the channels where they prefer to consume content. Some content consumers prefer to read online, while others like to receive notifications on their smartphones. Then you'll need to identify which digital platforms and mobile apps your audiences use.
Step 3. Create the content you want to distribute
Creating content for your audiences should be one of your top priorities. This could include:
- Budgeting and planning your content creation activities
- Hiring the right people
- Planning the most effective ways to deliver the content
Step 4. Distribute your content to the right audiences
Once you've created and distributed your diversified content, ensure you're targeting the right consumers. Use analytics to monitor your content distribution efforts and adjust as needed.
Content Diversification Is Now an Expectation
Diversified content is a crucial aspect of any content marketing strategy—marketers who do not diversify their content risk losing their audiences and relevance. To increase your reach, deliver more value, and attract new audiences, you'll need to create a diversified content strategy that aligns with your business goals.
4 – UGC Continues to Grow
In a report by BrightEdge, it says that social media content continues to grow in importance, from 24% of the digital marketing budget to 35% of the total.
In addition, UGC continues to grow in popularity, with 43% of users sharing user-generated content on social media.
Moreover, mobile content continues to be the most popular form of content marketing, with 41% of marketers planning to focus on mobile content in 2023.
Meanwhile, content marketing continues to grow in popularity, with 44% of marketers stating that they plan to increase spending on content marketing this year and 23% expecting to increase their budgets.
Why Is UGC Important?
UGC is important to consumers because it creates authentic, relevant, valuable content for their benefit.
According to a recent study, they trust and value UGC more than other forms of content marketing.
By creating UGC, brands can meet customers' needs directly in real time.
It is a more natural way to communicate with customers, and they are much more likely to respond positively to content created by them.
5 – Influencer Marketing Is Evolving
With the rise of the influencer economy, some challenges are yet to be overcome. The future of influencer marketing is brighter than ever, but there are still challenges that marketers must address to achieve tremendous success.
The most critical challenge is that influencers are still viewed as “free.” While that may be true in some cases, influencers aren't free. The time, energy, and effort they put into their posts take time, energy, and effort, which could be used to create original content or do something else.
However, as the industry evolves, influencers will increasingly be paid for their content. That will allow them to be more selective about what they post. As a result, marketers will be able to target their audiences more effectively and reach their intended audiences.
What's Next for Influencer Marketing?
As more people join the influencer economy, they will inevitably seek to make money from their posts. Marketers should develop partnerships with influencers to maximise the opportunities that come with influencer marketing. These collaborations will allow influencers to generate more revenue while remaining authentic to their audiences.
As the industry evolves, influencers will increasingly be paid for their content.
By focusing on quality rather than quantity, marketers can ensure that their audiences see their brands as trusted. They can also use influencers to help promote their products and services.
6 – Embracing Live Video
According to eMarketer, live video will grow faster than any other type of content by 2023. This is primarily due to the rise of live streaming and the increasing popularity of live-streaming apps such as Facebook Live and YouTube Live.
As brands take notice of the massive demand for live video content, there are concerns about the medium's future. While the growth of the medium is inevitable, live video is still in its infancy.
While live video may seem like a relatively new concept, it is quite a long time old. Live video content dates back to at least the 1980s. It was used to broadcast breaking news reports as early as the 1950s. It wasn't until recently that live video began taking off.
Today, brands are beginning to adopt live video content marketing efforts. Some of the most prominent brands already using live video include Netflix, Snapchat, and Twitter.
The rise of live video means brands are starting to focus on the best ways to create engaging live content.
Live video content is different from a pre-recorded video, as it's a continuous stream of video that can be played in real-time. This means that, unlike pre-recorded videos that are only viewable once, live video is constantly being watched.
To create engaging live video content, brands must ensure they're delivering quality live content that's relatable and fun. As the trend continues to grow, brands must also be prepared for the challenges of live video.
7 – Interactive Content
Brands use interactive content because it allows them to engage with their target audience, provide an additional level of education and promote their brand through the media. Interactive content helps the consumer interact with the brand to solve problems, seek information, share ideas and become a part of the brand conversation.
In 2023, interactive content will become even more critical for brands to reach out to consumers and connect with them.
According to Future Market Insights, the interactive content market will grow from $4.9 billion in 2016 to $16.3 billion by 2023. In addition, online consumer spending is expected to grow from $1.8 trillion in 2016 to $2.1 trillion in 2023. These figures indicate that interactive content will gain more traction in the coming years.
The types of interactive content that brands use include:
- Video
- Audio
- Interactive graphics
- Games
- Social media
- Mashups
How does Interactive Content Impact Marketing?
Marketers need to be aware of interactive content that can help to create brand awareness, build trust and increase engagement. When a brand engages with consumers, they gain more credibility and trust, which is what every marketer aims to achieve. It is a known fact that brands that engage with their consumers are viewed more favourably than those that do not. Interactive content increases brand awareness and drives traffic.
8 – Automated Content Creation
Automated content creation has been a big part of content marketing for years, but the advent of artificial intelligence is making it even more powerful. Today, automation can do things humans can't, such as automatically generating content for websites and social media accounts, writing news stories, creating videos, creating posts, and even taking pictures and editing them.
What this means for marketers is that they can create more content without hiring more staff. So instead of hiring more writers or editors, companies can invest in AI systems that can help produce their content for them.
In 2020, the leading companies in the marketing space were looking ahead to 2023 and planning to use automated content creation in their content marketing strategies.
The main goal of any content marketing strategy is to drive business. And there are two ways to do that:
- Drive traffic to a website
- Create interest among consumers
So, it should be no surprise that automated content creation is key to increasing both goals.
Automated content creation has become so influential that brands can hire fewer people to create more content. Instead of writing about sports, for example, a company might hire an algorithm to produce posts that people want to read. The same concept applies to everything from posts to webpages to social media.
The rise of automated content creation means that marketers can invest more in their marketing activities and less in other areas, like salespeople and customer support. This frees up their resources to drive more business and improve their overall results.
9 – AI-Powered Content Marketing Strategy
As a brand, there are three main benefits of using an AI-Powered Content Marketing Strategy in 2023.
First, AI-Powered Content Marketing allows brands to create unique content for consumer needs. By delivering tailored content to individual needs, consumers receive the content they want, and brands increase their share of voice.
Secondly, AI-Powered Content Marketing helps brands become experts in their respective fields. Using artificial intelligence (AI), content creators can produce unique content in less time than before.
Finally, AI-Powered Content Marketing allows brands to provide a positive experience to their consumers. By producing educational and entertaining content, brands gain their audience's trust and build customer relationships.
With the help of AI, brands can become expert sources of information for their customers and offer a positive experience through every interaction.
10 – Focus on Content Experience
Brands are focusing on content marketing in 2023 because they understand that content marketing has been proven to increase sales and lead generation and that more than 90% of consumers trust the content they see.
The content experience will take on three significant aspects in 2023:
- The type of content
- The quality of content
- The ability to consume the content
The type of content in the content experience will change because the focus is no longer only on what you put out but on what you put out that matters. This will include increasing the variety of content types that brands produce, accessing the right content quickly and efficiently, and consuming the right content in the way your customers want.
Quality of content will increase as consumers expect high-quality content. Brands that provide high-quality content are more trusted, and consumers are willing to spend more money with them. Consumers also expect that the content they receive will be well-organised and easily read.
The ability to consume the content will be increased by creating a seamless experience across all devices. Consumers will expect that when they purchase something online, it will be easy to use and access, regardless of the device they use.
This is a significant shift from content marketing in the past, where most brands still relied on traditional channels such as TV and print advertising. Instead, brands are creating a solid content marketing strategy that leverages technology to help meet these consumer demands.
How does content marketing fit into this shift? According to a recent study by Google and Facebook, most consumers say they'd instead use search engines and social media to find information rather than print publications.
Google and Facebook have become the go-to channels for consumers looking to make informed decisions on purchases, as they provide convenient, quick access to a wide range of information.
So, why do companies continue to rely on these traditional channels instead of leveraging the content marketing that has been proven to work? These traditional channels are still heavily regulated, whereas content marketing is less regulated.
In addition, most traditional channels require an expensive upfront investment in creating the content, designing the ads, and creating the campaigns. That makes them a challenging channel to scale. On the other hand, content marketing is a much more scalable channel since it's easier to create and deliver high-quality content.
The third aspect of the content experience is that it needs to be accessible on all devices. Consumers expect their purchases to be seamless and that the content and experiences they engage with will be the same across devices.
As a result, there will be an increased demand for a seamless experience across all devices, which will require technology to be a vital component of the content experience.
So, in 2023, more brands will focus on the content experience to give consumers the best experience possible on all devices. Brands will need to invest in the technologies that can help meet the demands of a content experience available on all platforms and all devices.
Wrapping Up
Content marketing has become one of the most popular ways to market your products online. There are several different platforms available to do so.
With so many options, knowing which ones will be worth your time and effort can take much work. I recommend researching each platform before you invest in them.
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