Any digital marketing professional knows that keeping on top of all the trends across the many digital marketing mediums is tricky. Things move quickly in marketing, and those who stay ahead of the curve gain the best reach and influence. When it comes to content marketing, here are the six things you need to hone in on.
Content marketing is a strategic approach to marketing. Veering away from marketing tactics that favor a hard sell, content marketing is all about showcasing a brand’s knowledge and expertise on a subject. The idea is that prospective customers will engage with a brand and regard it in a good light, and eventually become actual customers. This is all done through the creation of content, which could be blogs, white papers, social media posts, infographics and videos.
When it comes to the very latest trends in effective content marketing, these are the ones to watch.
1. Interactivity
It’s no secret that people want to feel more engaged with content and the personal experiences they have when they are browsing websites and social media. Now that an increasing amount of technology is available to create interactive online experiences, your prospective customers are expecting them to be delivered to them more and more. Polls and displaying content in a clickable question and answer format are still very popular, so digital marketers can always rely on these for a bit of extra engagement. However, try to think more broadly than this too, such as creating interactive infographic material and videos.
2. Natural Language Processing
Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP) is technology that is able to read, analyze and understand written content as a human would. This is why NLP is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for digital marketers who want to help their content marketing perform better. NLP works by crawling content and fixing issues that relate to its findability, which includes titles, metadata and descriptors. This can help marketing professionals ensure their content goes further from the outset. Added to this, NLP technology can also search, categorize and organize content assets from shared file systems, which can make digital marketing easier when you need to pull together content in different ways.
3. Video First
As the power of video continues to be realized across digital marketing professionals, thanks to the increased engagement with this content form, an emerging trend is to plan content from a ‘video first’ perspective. This means that when marketing strategies are being crafted, video is fast becoming the primary content format. That’s not to say written and audio content is not just as important. But switching the mindset to ‘video first’ creates space for all kinds of new written content ideas to help support video.
4. Infographics in the Driving Seat
Although marketing professionals have used infographics for many years, they are often another afterthought after more traditional marketing approaches have been exhausted. However, the power of infographics is now making this a key part of any starting marketing pack. Infographics are great for getting across information in a digestible way, and engagement with content is always higher when infographics are involved. With a variety of infographic-creating software out there, this is no longer something that only marketers with easy access to a graphic designer can do. There is also increasing understanding of how infographics can do well on social media too. While it was common for marketers previously to post a whole infographic on social media, there is new realization that posting teaser sections of infographics is a great way to get click-throughs to websites too.
5. Audio Content
With video, smart visuals and well-crafted written content capturing most of the engagement in content marketing for a number of years, audio content has often struggled to keep up, with engagement rates lower than other options. This is finally starting to change, particularly given the upsurge in podcast listeners since the Covid-19 pandemic started. There has been a shift in habits among people, as they have downloaded podcasts and audio to accompany them on socially distanced walks and hours spent working from home alone. Marketing professionals are jumping onto this trend, by planning more engaging, audio-only content to gain brand recognition and customers.
6. AI-Powered Solutions
While NLP is the top AI technology that digital marketers are jumping on, there are various other AI solutions that are helping to serve marketing content. Chatbots is one area that helps digital marketers enormously, as frequently asked questions can be answered quickly and easily, while new leads can be generated at the same time. Website searches using AI technology are also helping marketing professionals give customers a highly personalized experience. By learning the search terms, habits and preferences of users, AI technologies can serve up increasingly personalized website experiences. This means that the right content is reaching the right customers in a seamless way, which is incredibly powerful for both content marketing strategies and customer loyalty.