Content marketing is a great way to connect with your customers and readers on a deeper level. More than ever before, it’s crucial for any business to have a content marketing strategy.

Some fast facts:

  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing
  • Content marketing generates 3x more leads than traditional marketing
  • Companies that employ a content marketing strategy generate 6 times more conversions than those that don’t

By creating engaging content, you can build trust and loyalty that can lead to long-term relationships with your customers. Having a good content strategy can help you:

  • Demonstrate that you understand your audience’s needs and expectations
  • Create content that your customers actually find valuable
  • Determine what formats to use and where to publish your content, so your audience will actually find it where they are on the internet
  • Develop a coherent brand story that will drive your marketing and sales

While there are tried and tested ways to do content marketing, like social media and blogging, new trends emerge every year that transform how brands can connect with their audiences.

In this post, we’ll cover these emerging trends that you’ll have to keep an eye out for. 

Whether you’re looking to stay ahead of the curve or simply want to know the state of content marketing, you’ll find useful ideas here.

1. Google’s helpful content update will drive quality.

Last quarter, Google announced some major changes to the way it will handle content in search. The goal of these updates is to ensure that searchers find helpful, relevant, and accurate information when they use Google.

This update means that content creators will have to focus on creating high-quality, helpful content if they want their pages to rank well in search results.

How to write people-first content:

  • Create content for people, not search engines. 
  • Write about something you know – stick to your niche and avoid writing about anything and everything just to see what sticks.
  • Focus on the user’s needs – answer any questions they may have.
  • If you’re writing web copy, don’t write just to hit a certain word count. We want to add value; let your message dictate the length of your content. 
  • Use simple language that everyone can understand. Aim for a fifth-grade rating on the Flesch-Kincaid readability scale. 

2. Short-form videos will continue to reign supreme.

Videos have always been one of the most popular content types on social media, and this trend is not slowing down. 

In the past decade, short-form videos have grown exponentially in popularity as more people consume more content on their mobile devices. In fact, by 2023, 2.72 billion people will be watching videos on their mobile phones.

Videos are a great way to tell a story.  They can be educational, informative, or just plain entertaining. And because short videos are so easy to consume on a small screen, they are perfect for social media.

3. Podcasts will only grow in popularity.

Podcasts are a great hit during the pandemic – and why wouldn’t it be? It’s fun, it’s easy to digest, and it’s the perfect companion for when you’re stuck at home. 

Now that we’ve come out of isolation, podcasts continue to be the entertainment of choice for many Americans. In fact, it is forecasted that there will be over 100 million podcast listeners in the United States by 2024, up from 75.9 million in 2020.

  • As of June 2022, there are over 2.4 million podcasts with over 66 million episodes. 
  • By the end of 2022, there will be an estimated 424 million podcast listeners around the world. 

That’s a lot of potential listeners for your brand!

4. Interactive content will be a game-changer.

We all love a good white paper or a blog article, but sometimes, they just don’t cut it. 

After all, we all consume information differently, and we all process it in our own way: some like learning through podcast episodes, and others prefer long-form articles (like me).

Depending on your audience, it may be a good idea to integrate interactive content in your strategy. This comes in many forms, such as: 

  • quizzes
  • polls and surveys
  • contests
  • interactive ebooks
  • calculators
  • interactive infographics

Aside from being more engaging, dynamic and interactive content are more likely to generate clicks and leads.

You can also use them on landing pages to make your user stay longer on your page – when you capture their attention and give them something valuable, they’ll be more likely to convert.

5. User-generated content will be a powerful marketing tool.

User-generated content is the new word-of-mouth. It’s basically any form of content that is created by your users, for your brand. This can include content like 

  • product reviews
  • branded hashtags
  • social mentions
  • photo tags
  • blog articles
  • videos

When your prospects see that your brand is being talked about and used by real people, they are more likely to trust you. 

A survey showed that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as trustworthy compared to other marketing messages.

User-generated content can also be a great way to connect with your audience and get feedback about your products or services. 

You can use these valuable insights to improve your offerings and make them more relevant to your target market.

6. Improved user experience across devices will be a priority.

User experience (UX) is more than just a fad. It’s a necessary part of doing business in the digital age. UX refers to how a user feels while interacting with a product or service, whether it’s an app, a website, or a business process. 

Having good UX design can create a positive experience for your customers, which in turn, can increase brand loyalty. 

When your customers – your users – have a frictionless experience dealing with you, you’ll increase the chance of converting them into customers. This is true whether they’re interacting with your chatbot, your app, or a landing page.

With more than half of internet users around the world browsing the web on their mobile phones, it’s imperative for businesses to create optimized experiences. 

Accessibility is also important in UX design. If you want your website to be effective, design it with a simple layout, include user-friendly navigation, and don’t cram too much information into your primary landing pages.

While some of these trends might seem like they’re years away from going mainstream, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve and be aware of these developments. 

By keeping abreast with what’s happening in the fast-changing content marketing landscape, you’ll find techniques and tactics you can test for your brand.