Content marketing trends are entering a dangerous new phase.
It’s heading into a trough.
You could call it……the dip of disillusionment.
For many, the promise hasn’t arrived and the returns haven’t materialized. And the marketing manager is not sure if they should even continue.
The idea at first glance looked good.
The reality?
The execution was poor. The content was created and shared but nothing of the substance showed up. Few leads and little or no sales.
They had bought into the hype but didn’t realize the work and effort needed to make it effective.
But despite this insight from the technocrats and the observers, content marketing is not going away any time soon. But the reality of non-performing content has started to sink in as the attention span of the consumers of content becomes shorter and the noise and competition grows greater.
What does this mean for us as entrepreneurs and marketers?.
We are going to have to work not just harder but smarter. And we are also going to have to pay attention to trends that maybe you hadn’t noticed or thought didn’t matter.
Authentic content
Traveling is a passion of mine. It is about discovering humanity and nature at the same time. But capturing those experiences doesn’t require the DSLR with 10 lenses and a big bag.
A smartphone is enough.
Who waits to edit and photoshop back in the hotel room? Now we just hit upload and hit the share button. Those real and raw images create more trust. Polished and fake images are seen as less trustworthy by a discerning millennial audience.
So we are going to see a lot more live videos and images that tap into this growing need for authentic content.
Storytelling
After years of just telling people what to do it has become apparent to me that education and soulless content as I knew it was not enough to change minds. It was time to add stories to the telling. Inspiration was required to be empowered through storytelling.
If you want to be remembered then touching hearts is where it happens. Many content marketers are discovering that storytelling has a power that they have ignored but are struggling to stand out in a sea of brand blandness.
So the art of storytelling and the importance of emotions is being rediscovered and gaining the focus it deserves.
Video
Streaming video is the hot trend but the use of pre-recorded video is now essential. But it is now being taken from the video hosts and played from within the social networks. Video used to sit just on YouTube and on websites.
Fast emerging video marketing technology platforms are starting to replace multiple tools (from editing to landing pages and calls to action) that had made video content marketing complex and clunky.
Expect to see video content marketing continue to be used much more widely due to better ease of use.
Influencers
Online influencers are a new species.
They have emerged from the primordial digital mist because social media happened. At first, they were not noticed even though they were in plain sight.
The sub-species includes:
- Youtube influencers
- Instagram Influencers
- Twitter influencers
- Podcast influencers
Quality content
One of my first blog posts was 106 words. No visuals and no sub-titles. It was enough then. We all need to feed the content beast that is a global competition for attention so banging out a ton of words, images and videos is still part of the game.
Quantity is still important but as Google has continued to impose its “user experience” and “quality” algorithms as part of its search optimization the standard bar has been raised.
Content marketing is not just about social and shares it is also about search. Quality long-form content sits right in that mix.
So long-form content is now a key component for serious content marketers. SEO traffic is often 50% of the attention for a blog post. Over half this blog’s traffic comes from organic search.
User-generated content
Content marketing started out as a few blog articles, a Facebook post followed by a tweet. It was a gentle walk in the park. That was enough. But that was then.
Content became militarized and industrialized. Done at scale for the masses.
The monolithic media companies had been poked and stirred and discovered the power of content and publishing. They woke up and smelled the potential and rolled out the big metal.
So competing for attention has never been harder. Creating content on your own is a lonely place and there is another issue. It doesn’t scale.
Mobile
Though it is now an obvious trend it still needs to be mentioned. Some of the key areas to watch as mobile continues to become an essential extension of humanity and the tool for receiving and consuming content are:
- Internal company advocates and external fans creating and sharing content about a brand using visual content marketing apps
- Mobile as a primary device for accessing augmented reality
- The rise of apps to deliver content that is easy to find and access