Content has been the monarch of marketing for decades, and it should continue its reign into the next decade. Yet, even though content remains a top marketing technique, how content looks and functions is ever-changing. In 2020 and beyond, content marketing experts predict the following trends to dominate — so you best learn about them now.
However, before you dive into the latest and greatest content marketing trends, it might be wise to ask yourself an important question: What is content marketing? Many business leaders immediately offer answers like “creating content that engages audiences” — but that is only half-true. Effective content marketing entails not just creating engaging content but also following up with analysis to understand what effect that content is having on the business’s bottom line. Ultimately, if your content isn’t driving sales in one way or another, something might be wrong. You can check your content using grammar checker by EssaOnTime.
Then again, if you are diligent about analyzing the performance of your content and tracking its success, you might be ready for the best content marketing trends of today and those likely to continue being successful into the future.
Table of Contents
Video Content
Written content remains important, but more and more web users are drawn to the ease, convenience and entertainment value of video. The video format makes it easier to tell a story, which in turn makes it easier to connect with an audience’s emotions. This can be exceedingly valuable for some brands, which rely heavily on pathos to attract and engage consumers.
In addition to produced video content, live videos are becoming more common and more clamored for by audiences. On platforms like Instagram Live or YouTube Live, you can directly address your audience, answer questions in real time, demo your products, show behind-the-scenes processes and more. Because live videos aren’t scripted or edited, audiences are more apt to trust your brand messages and products, driving up interest and loyalty.
Voice Content
It just might be that 2020 is the year of the voice. Today, more than one in four U.S. households have at least one smart speaker; the average smart home actually has 2.3 smart speakers, through which users communicate with smart assistants, who control their smart devices. As a result, fewer people are searching the web with the stilted search language picked up through decades of trying to manipulate search engines to get the right results; these days, people are searching the web through voice-enabled smart assistants using more natural human speech.
Google has begun adapting to this shift with a machine-learning tool called BERT, which helps the search engine better understand what certain words and phrases mean. However, content creators — that’s you — need to offer voice-activated content, which can be delivered to users through their smart assistants. Audio is obviously an important consideration, especially narrative news snippets in podcast form. You should feel free to experiment and be creative with your content to make it more accessible via voice.
User Content
There is a reason why word-of-mouth marketing remains the most impactful method of spreading awareness of your business and building brand loyalty: People trust other people, especially people they know, more than they trust your marketing messages. This idea has spawned all sorts of ratings and reviews websites which deliver real people’s opinions of businesses and products.
Yet, instead of encouraging your customers to visit other websites to learn what others have to say about your business and product, you should consider hosting user-generated content on your own site or social media pages. You might contact an influencer who has spoken about your product and ask them to create sponsored content, or you might reach out to positive reviewers, asking them for an interview about their experience using your product. Your audience appreciates a real person’s perspective and will use user-generated content to make more informed purchasing decisions.
It is valuable to know about content marketing trends and act on them, but you should also recognize that adhering closely to trends won’t necessarily help you achieve your marketing and business goals. As you begin to adopt some of the content trends for 2020 and beyond, you should work with content marketing experts to ensure that everyone is getting what they need from the content you produce.
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