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

Content marketing automation

Automation was first seen as an anathema on the new and emerging social web.

But marketers soon came to realize that their content, efforts, and effectiveness didn’t scale very well without it. This is now being woven into influencer marketing and native content marketing tools.

Delivery of content and distribution to multiple channels including email and social networks is complex and fragmented. The answer is often not more people but better mousetraps.

Automated email marketing funnels deliver the prospect to content such as a video sales page, an evergreen webinar, or a free ebook. They can be targeted and tagged to be delivered to the most relevant prospect.

Native content

As the adoption of ad-blocking software reduces the effectiveness of banner ads then brands are trying to reach their audience in other ways. This leads to the rising trend of blog posts and articles that are sponsored.

The old is now new

We knew it in the past as the old school “advertorial”. Part of the reason the use of Native branded content has been embraced is the necessity for digital publishers to monetize their websites.

One of the challenges with native advertising is scaling it. And we can see how Forbes is confronting that by allowing access to its content creation backend.

It will be interesting to see how this trend spills over from the big players into the small niche publishers and bloggers.

Live streaming video

We are now seeing the rise of “live video casting” that is moving from niche to mainstream

Meerkat was the most visible startup in the space in 2014. Periscope followed close behind and Twitter bought them. Now we are seeing the fast growth and uptake of “Facebook Live”. YouTube and Tumblr are also starting to play at live streaming video.

Live streaming video is also emerging as in-built features in video marketing platforms.

Expiring content

Almost everyone has this problem. Procrastination. It is very human. Marketers and door-to-door salesman have understood this for decades. Expiring content is part of the solution today.

What was perceived as a fad has become a serious trend and it comes down to a metric that is always in decline. Engagement. A noisy digital world with an ever-growing explosion of content means everyone is competing for engagement.

Expiring content creates scarcity.

Optimized content

Many content marketers have a blind spot.

They know how to get traffic. They also know how to create engaging content. But they often overlook optimizing. Because it’s not just about the traffic that turns up to engage with your content but what you do with it.

The switched on and savvy content marketers are now paying more focus on optimizing their content to capture leads and sales. The attention is shifting from fluffy and vanity metrics to using data for testing content for conversion.

Changing distribution channels

Earlier this year I added some new sharing buttons to my site. I checked into my analytics the other day and something stood out. Twitter shares were 135, LinkedIn shares 31 and Facebook was 13. But there seemed to be an anomaly.

That’s worth paying attention to. Don’t assume that your content distribution channels are static. Keep an eye on your data and the digital marketing trends and make sure that you are testing the emerging social networks and messaging apps.

Some others to watch are Flipboard, Medium, and even SMS for getting your content in front of a new audience. It’s about removing friction and making your content move.

Interactive content

With declining attention and engagement on websites and blogs, the content marketer needs better tactics, tools, and standout content in the toolbox. One of these is interactive content.

Early exponents of this tactic were Hubspot with its website grader which was used by over 4 million websites after being introduced in 2006. I remember going back to this site many times after starting my blog to see if it was improving.

Podcasting

Podcasting is a powerful type of content to engage with your audience. Its domination by a walled garden called iTunes is also a barrier to making content move and hard to discover. Those constraints were barriers to leaping into the space for many content marketers and potential publishers.

Future trends

Augmented and virtual reality content

Augmented and virtual reality is often a fantasy world that has been beyond the reach of most content marketing and brands. The cost, the timelines and the resources required have made it prohibitive.

But the stunning success of the Pokemon Go mobile app that is an intersection of virtual reality, mobile and social is an insight into where augmented reality sits in the content marketing pantheon.

It’s real, interactive, and augmented content. Expect to see content marketers take a lot more notice.