The world was turned upside down because of a global pandemic. Content marketing trends usually come along with new technology. This time around, however, content marketing trends were caused mostly due to changes in human society.
People got used to being indoors and spending more time in the digital world. With this change, consumer behavior and expectations changed as well.
With more consumers shopping and spending time online, they’ve started looking to brands and businesses for answers.
Content marketing is effective at answering these questions. However, only having a good and active blog doesn’t suffice anymore.
People consume content in multiple formats, their expectations are high, they demand more information and will buy from you only when convinced that your products are the best they can get.
This makes it necessary to stay on top of the game. The best way to do so is to hop on the latest content marketing trends and see what works best for your business.
Let’s check out the content marketing trends shaping the digital marketing landscape.
10 Content Marketing Trends To Pay Attention To.
Focus on Understanding Search Intent.
Generating traffic is one of the main objectives of content marketing. However, high traffic numbers won’t benefit you unless you can generate leads and convert them. You have to provide value and information to your audience for that to happen.
Content marketers and SEO experts have been tunnel-visioned, only focusing on keywords, forgetting the intended utility of content. This has resulted in high generating content that isn’t generating and converting leads.
As a result, understanding user search intent has been trending again as a content marketing trend in 2022.
Content must necessarily be crafted to help people get answers to their queries. Unless you provide value in some form, your audience won’t be convinced to purchase from you.
Google and other search engines are adopting a user-first approach. Content marketers and SEO experts need to ensure that the content is crafted well and helps the intended user properly.
Ensuring this will ensure your content stays effective at all its intended functions.
AR/VR.
Almost 70 million people were regularly using AR in 2019. Reports suggest that the AR/VR industry will grow to $300 billion in 2024. What does this mean?
Consumers are looking for an immersive experience from the comforts of their homes. They expect to be able to check and try out products virtually before making a purchase. Why is that?
The ability to have the same retail experience as visiting a physical store, virtually, is highly desirable. The same shopping experience without long commutes, long checkout lines and crowded places are what drive the growth in AR/VR for the retail sector.
Humans can process visual information faster and retain a large portion of it. This presents a marketing opportunity not just for retail but for the B2B sector as well.
A fine example of this would be Adidas’s Delicatessen campaign. In it they enabled the audience to experience mountain climbing with the help of VR technology.
Immersive and interactive multi-format content enabled by AR/VR will make marketing more effective and cost-efficient in the coming days.
Artificial Intelligence.
The capability with which AI can perform complex tasks has been increasing every year. A large portion of marketing at present is handled by AI.
Especially when it comes to data analysis, pattern recognition and generating insights through behavioral analysis, AI has made big strides.
Content marketing can benefit from all that AI has to offer. Hyper-personalization, interactive content, content planning, curation and optimization can all be handled using a powerful and capable AI.
With chatbots powered by AI, you can make your blogs interactive. You can answer additional questions from the audience, engage in discussions with them or gather feedback from them regarding the blog and their thoughts about the topic.
You can even have an AI scour through the internet for the best topics you can cover with your content. Thus, AI will help you plan and execute your content marketing strategy with exceptional effectiveness.
Visual Search.
Search engines and other tech firms have tried and succeeded to make searching for something hassle-free and feel natural. Voice and Visual/Image search have seen a significant rise in recent years.
The image recognition market is touted to grow into a $40 billion Industry by 2025. Google, Pinterest, Samsung and Amazon already provide visual/image search features.
The younger generations have already embraced this way of search which has cemented its potential for the long term.
To make the most of this trend, you will need to post visual content regularly and ensure the alt tags of all images are optimized for SEO.
This way, anytime someone searches for your product or a similar one, they will organically end up on your website.
Follow them up with all the relevant information they might need. Focus on providing them with a good experience and you’ll have made a sale via Visual search.
Voice Search.
Talking is our most natural form of communication. Tech firms have had an idea about this for a long time. Verbal communications with computers and smart devices became mainstream with Apple’s launch of Siri back in 2011.
Other tech giants soon followed suit. Google came out with voice search and Google Assistant, Samsung has Bixby, Amazon has Alexa and Microsoft has Cortana.
The Millennials and Gen Zers practically grew up with these technologies and show a high rate of adoption for voice search.
These two generations will form the bulk of the global consumers soon. Considering this, there is a need to generate content that is natively optimized for voice search.
For context, half of all smartphone users use voice search and 62% of voice search users end up making a purchase. There are 5.3 billion smartphone users.
So there are plenty of opportunities if you optimize all the content you publish for voice search.
Hyper-Personalization.
Regular personalization has proven to be effective with content marketing. However, the pursuit to recreate the same customer experience like the one provided by a salesman who’s known you for years led to the rise of hyper-personalization.
Hyper-personalization takes regular personalization further deep by using real-time inputs and interactional data analytics. As a result, you’re able to provide the customer with an experience that is unmatched and closely resembles offline retail.
With hyper-personalization, brands can engage users at an individual level. Powered by AI and automation, brands can cater to a users’ wants, needs, desires, preferences, likes and dislikes by providing suitable content.
Thanks to the fierce competition, customer experience has become an important distinguishing factor. These unique digital interactions driven by hyper-personalization positively add to the customer experience.
SaaS firms such as Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. have been utilizing this approach for recommending content to users.
Not only has it worked but helped raise revenue and customer retention!
Storytelling.
Considerable advancements have been made in terms of technology. AI is fully capable of creating top-notch content that is grammatically and factually impeccable. However, storytelling remains a powerful factor affecting the effectiveness of content.
Stories with a sense of empathy and emotional connection are very impactful at creating a lasting positive impression on the audience. We all probably have some old adverts stuck in our minds like chewing gum under the desk.
AIs are not yet fully capable of creating content that can connect with humans. So storytelling will continue to be a big factor affecting the effectiveness of content.
Many consider storytelling more of an art form than a science. I believe that storytelling is a mix of both art and science. Finding the perfect balance between the artistic and scientific aspects of content will be a long-term content marketing trend.
Video Content.
Visual and audio content is more effective compared to plain text. One can impart more information quickly using visuals and audio. The audience will retain significantly more information through these mediums compared to text.
But when you combine audio and visuals, you can not only inform people and have them retain the information, but entertain them at the same time.
This makes video content extremely effective at achieving marketing objectives. The consumption of video content has seen a significant rise in recent years. This rise can be attributed to short-form video content.
Almost 75% of marketers claim that video marketing is the most effective form of digital marketing.
By making videos short and entertaining, marketing efforts can deliver a higher ROI. Considering all the upsides, it is safe to say that videos will be a content marketing trend for the upcoming years.
Podcasts.
Video content isn’t the only form of content that has seen a rise in consumption. Audio content is right behind the video in terms of consumption growth. Two factors have contributed to this, the pandemic and the convenience audio content offers.
With social interaction being halted due to the pandemic, people turned to podcasts to keep themselves entertained. Moreover, it was convenient as they could undertake a task while listening to podcasts and get things done.
With 80% of listeners reporting they can recall a brand. Almost 51% of Americans were listening to podcasts in 2019, the number has only grown. With such stats backing up podcasts, it is clear why it’s a content marketing trend in 2022.
You can present your audience with options to consume a long-form piece of content, either text, video, podcast or infographics. Audiences will choose according to their preferences but the result will be more of your content being consumed.
Content Atomization.
Long-form content has always held a lot of value. It not only exhibits your expertise but provides in depth information to your audience. The only problem is, a single big piece of content takes time to be consumed.
The idea of content atomization is to break down such big pieces of in depth content into more palatable sizes. You can break down a white paper or research work into a series of blogs. Break down a blog into infographics and social media posts.
This approach allows you to maximize the utility of a single piece of content. With content atomization, you’re able to make content consumption easy for the users.
Moreover, delivering a piece of content in different formats allows people to consume it in the format most comfortable to them. This maximized utility translates into gains in engagement, reach, higher ROI and traffic for your business.
Wrapping Up With.
The future of content marketing looks promising with the rollout of Web 3.0 around the corner. A lot of changes in human society and technology have necessitated changes in content marketing strategy.
Making sure you’re well versed with all the content marketing trends will put you ahead of the competition. Experiment with these trends and find out which suits your business the best.
With careful due diligence and adapting to trends, you’ll be able to maximize your ROI on content marketing.
