Content marketing is more complex. Since the trends in digital content are changing more quickly than ever, it becomes harder for marketers to understand their audience and what they are searching for properly. You may need to be flexible and change your content strategies in light of what worked for you last year or month.
Keeping up with the most recent trends in content marketing will help you remain ahead of the curve and give your audience helpful information they want to read rather than just what you want to publish. Live streaming, TikTok, ChatGPT, and many other previously unheard-of video types and platforms are now becoming widely available. And you must try these new strategies if you want to remain relevant.
Why should you employ various forms of content marketing?
To keep your readers interested, we advocate utilizing several content marketing tactics. By changing your content formats, you may offer information in the most effective way possible, based on your target demographic, stage of the buyer’s journey, and platform.
Each kind of content serves a different purpose and will assist you in achieving a different goal. A blog post, for example, is excellent for increasing organic traffic to your website, while a TikTok movie may increase brand awareness. A customer testimonial, on the other hand, can help raise sales, and a webinar can improve lead-generation.
You are restricting your online success by merely creating one type of content. A multi-channel strategy that uses diverse content types, on the other hand, can help you achieve long-term success as long as your material is valuable.
The top ten content marketing trends for 2023
Let’s take a look at some of the most anticipated (and well-established) content marketing trends for 2023.
- Accelerate blog creation.
- Invest in SEO.
- Tap into video .
- Real-time engagement.
- Run your own webinars.
- Get started with audio.
- Focus on content experience.
- Create in-depth eBooks & whitepapers.
- Encourage user-generated content (UGC).
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Generated Content (MGC).
Accelerate blog creation
With over 6 million blogs now available, you might believe blogs are oversaturated and out of date, yet you couldn’t be more incorrect. According to surveys, 77% of internet users read blogs on a regular basis, either to find an answer to a question, to learn something new, to remain up to speed on the latest news, or to decide whether or not to purchase anything. So, blogs are far from extinct, but you must ensure that yours are worth reading.
According to HubSpot, companies that post 16 or more blogs per month obtain 3.5 times the traffic of those that produce fewer than four blogs per month. Remember that quality is always preferable to quantity when it comes to written material, formatting, and accompanying visuals. So, instead of just writing blogs to satisfy a quota, develop material with a purpose within your given resources. Don’t forget to promote your blogs!
Invest in SEO content
According to recent surveys, SEO content is becoming increasingly vital for organizations, with 69% of marketers engaging in SEO now. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of B2C marketers and 78% of B2B marketers use keyword research to develop content, and you should too.
SEO content is critical for assisting potential clients in finding you online by raising your chances of appearing at the top of Google’s search results page. This, in turn, will attract traffic to your site and encourage potential clients to convert. In fact, 66% of buyers undertake some type of internet research before making an online purchase, so getting your site at the top of search results should be your first focus.
Furthermore, throughout the last year, Google has thrown a lot of improvements our way, including three key algorithm modifications. This had a knock-on impact, with many sites incurring ranking decreases and other penalties, forcing marketers to rethink their plans and devote more effort to SEO. With so many organizations investing in SEO content and getting positive outcomes (such as this), SEO content is undoubtedly a trend to watch.
Tap into the video
It is anticipated that 3.37 billion internet users will be watching video content in 2022, with video streaming and downloads accounting for 82% of worldwide internet traffic, and this figure is only expected to climb. As you can see, video content is quite popular and, as such, is a very strong tool for marketers.
Music videos, viral videos, how-tos, live streaming, educational videos, and product evaluations are among the most popular video formats, according to Statista. This provides several options for marketers to develop their own video content that their target audience can interact with, whether it’s a product presentation on their website or a hilarious video on TikTok.
Many firms struggle to realize their full video potential due to a lack of in-house knowledge as well as budget constraints. However, video production does not necessarily have to be expensive or require the services of a professional videographer. You can still produce high-quality movies using a tripod, ring light, and smartphone, as long as you have a successful advertising approach. Why not try your hand at the video in 2023, with 86% of video marketers reporting enhanced lead-generation and 87% reporting good ROI?
Real-time engagement
Along with video content, customers will expect certain firms to go one step further and capitalize on another trend in social media content: real-time involvement. The major reason for this is to increase authenticity, develop a brand personality, and interact with your audience directly. As a result, live broadcasting, such as on TikTok Lives, Instagram Lives, or even LinkedIn Lives, will grow increasingly popular.
Brands would be required to provide real-time involvement in their customer service departments in addition to live broadcasting. Consumers will expect companies to respond to their concerns and resolve their issues through social media platforms and live chats in real-time. So, now is the time to start using conversational marketing to communicate with your consumers in real-time.
Run your own webinars
B2B customer behaviors are changing, and content marketers must work even harder to persuade them to complete the buyer’s journey. According to Forrester, the number of contacts required before B2B consumers make a purchasing choice has increased by 59%, as they now conduct more research and depend more heavily on input from colleagues. Marketers must thus improve their communication skills. Webinars are an excellent method to accomplish this.
Webinars are simply online training sessions that delegates sign up for with their email address and join via conferencing systems like Zoom. Hosting a webinar as a brand is an efficient way to demonstrate your knowledge in a certain field and develop authority.
You may also use this as an opportunity to interact with prospective clients by conducting a Q&A session afterward. This is excellent for making your attendees feel visible, engaging them, and addressing their questions, which may be the final step before purchase. Indeed, studies show that webinars may achieve high conversion rates of 30–40%, and even if the conversion isn’t nearly a sale, they are one of the finest lead generation techniques for businesses.
Get started with audio
We are busier now than ever before. We are constantly on the move and pushing ourselves to work more, which might leave us with less time for leisure. Consuming audio information, such as podcasts, is an excellent alternative for the time-pressed individual. It helps people entertain themselves or learn new things without breaking their hectic routine, whether it’s listening on their morning commute or listening in the background while working. There are presently 464.7 million podcast listeners worldwide, with a projected increase to 504.9 million by 2024.
Podcasts are excellent for humanizing your brand and building authenticity because they allow your audience to interact with a real person with a genuine voice. Having an experienced host or inviting colleagues can also assist your brand in establishing authority in your field and demonstrating your competence. Podcasts, in essence, give a forum for sharing knowledge, developing a community, and eliminating any sales speak, focusing only on delivering value to your audience and building trust. The more value you give, the more likely it is that your listeners will share your podcast and help you grow your audience.
Audio content, like other content, may be repurposed into new formats, such as blog entries for your website or sound bites and infographics for social media. This will help you save time and resources while increasing your ROI.
Focus on the content experience
The complete path a reader takes when reading material, including accessing, consuming, and engaging with content across many platforms, is referred to as the content experience. This includes how the material is categorized and easy to locate, how you customized it, how relevant and entertaining it is, the platforms you utilize, and how different content pieces interlink.
Changing the way your material is delivered to your audience may have a significant influence on how well it is received. This might involve including extra visuals, converting a lengthy blog post into a video, incorporating mobile optimization, or using more audience data for greater personalization.
The beautiful thing about content experience is that it does not necessitate major adjustments if you currently devote time to content marketing. It is essentially a new approach to content that will increase the value you provide to your viewers and help you stand out from the crowd, particularly as we address content shock.
Create in-depth eBooks and whitepapers
eBooks and whitepapers are lengthy pieces of literature that give detailed information on a certain topic or issue. They are intended to assist potential consumers in understanding a problem and, eventually, finding a solution, preferably by utilizing your services or goods.
According to surveys, 71% of B2B users rely on eBooks and whitepapers to help them make purchase choices. Many times, brands are interested in your services, but they need to provide a business case to key stakeholders, the real decision-makers. As a result, they require all available information as well as hard facts. As a result, longer kinds of content are absolutely something to think about this year, especially if you’re marketing to other firms.
You may also make this sort of material gated because it contains a lot of useful information, such as exclusive insights and data. This implies that in order to access the content, users must enter some personal information, such as their work title and email address. This is extremely successful for lead creation and may also help guide your email segmentation and marketing efforts by providing a more in-depth insight into your target demographic.
Encourage user-generated content (UGC)
According to reports, 92% of consumers prefer word-of-mouth or personal referrals over any type of brand-created promotion. And, with consumer trust on the decline, establishing a strong relationship with consumers, acquiring trust, and providing a customized experience should be major priorities this year.
User-generated content, or UGC, has enormous potential for organizations seeking to create brand trust and consumer loyalty. UGC may take various forms, including testimonials, product reviews, blogs, social media postings, and stories—anything published by someone other than your business.
UGC has several advantages, including supporting your social engagement goals, increasing traffic to your website, and even directly affecting your sales. According to Vendasta, 92% of consumers read at least one online review before making a purchasing decision, with an average of seven reviews viewed before making a purchase. As a result, in many circumstances, UGC is critical to consumers completing the purchasing process.
UGC is an excellent alternative for businesses with limited resources since, in many situations, the material is generated for free, by choice, by brand advocates—members of your community who are so enthusiastic about your product or service that they just want to share their experience with others!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine-Generated Content (MGC)
Last but not least, there are AI and MGC. With the recent introduction of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence for content production, there is little question that AI and MGC will be tested in the marketing world this year and expand to become a new content creation trend.
Although these technologies can generate high-quality material that can be utilized for content research, ideation, and curation, there are significant limits. ChatGPT, for example, cannot give credible sources and, without context, may not always deliver accurate information. It may also be redundant and will not give an exhaustive solution to your questions. While AI and MGC are far from ideal, they may nevertheless be employed as part of your plans in conjunction with human knowledge.
Blogging and long-form content
In 2023, blogs and long-form material will be important. Longer content is useful as a content marketing strategy since it is a passive approach to creating more visitors through SEO optimization and high-quality research. The most influential materials are reports, whitepapers, and long-form essays. The research and writing will take longer, but the outcomes will speak for themselves. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2021 study, 48% of respondents claimed that research studies produced the best outcomes in their marketing efforts. Creators should strive to create an evergreen collection of material in various formats. The expenditure is minor in comparison to the potential return from interested visitors arriving at your content and plunging into your products and services.
Video and interactive content
The Video is not going away! In 2020, TikTok ruled the scene, pushing the globe into well-curated algorithmic happiness (along with a few surprising dance trends). Instagram’s response to its strong opponent was to reward its producers with prizes for publishing video content rather than still photographs in July 2021. This has altered consumer behavior, as viewers are now poised to watch their favorite companies and producers release catchy video content.
A smart marketing plan must include interactive content. Everything from Instagram polls to email signups may help you improve interaction and establish a devoted following. This means that you should look for methods to incorporate interactive components into your static material, such as video embedding or calls to action.
Leave A Comment