It’s easy to figure out what makes content creation such a critical marketing concept. It gives businesses the opportunity to raise awareness, generate leads, and grow customer loyalty in the long run. It costs 62% less than traditional marketing, but it drives three times as many leads.
On the other hand, it’s not so easy to come up with a quality content marketing strategy. Although it seems fairly simple, the truth is that you will have to face dozens or even hundreds of competitors in the same niche, which means that you must come up with amazing topics to win over the target audience.
How you do it depends mostly on the nature of your business and your branding guidelines, but there are also a few important ideas to be considered in 2020 and beyond. In this post, we will show you the top seven content marketing trends. Let’s take a look!
1. Use Multiple Formats
If there is one thing modern users hate the most, it must be monotony. You should avoid it at all costs because it’s the only way to make the content interesting week after week.
How can you do it? The answer is simple – make sure to mix formats and publish all sorts of posts. Such a strategy will make your marketing activities more appealing, while each post will look fresh and exciting. Every type of content matters here because different audiences have different preferences. For example, reports prove that:
- Websites with a blog have 434% more indexed pages than those without any text posts.
- Over 40% of marketers reported that infographics and other original graphics were the most engaging type of content.
- Nearly 60% of users would love to see more videos from the brand they follow.
These and many other studies prove that users love all sorts of posts, so you better indulge them by creating different formats. This includes everything from blogs, images, infographics, videos, and GIFs to audio podcasts, charts, memes, animations, and so on.
2. Make the Content Interactive and Engaging
Your fans expect nothing less than high-quality content, but you also want to keep them engaged. For this reason, you should try to make the content highly engaging and interactive. You probably know the basics of user engagement already:
- Add a strong call to action to inspire the audience to do something after reading a post.
- Ask questions to encourage users to leave comments.
- Answer users’ comments and create discussions.
However, you can take the extra step and utilize new technologies to make the content even more appealing. A great solution is to exploit Augmented Reality (AR), an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. AR will make the content fully interactive and force users to take action.
For instance, IKEA launched an AR-powered mobile app to provide customers with a much better shopping experience. The IKEA Place platform lets you virtually place true-to-scale 3D models in your very own space, thus making it easier to choose the perfect piece of furniture.
3. Take Advantage of Content Marketing Tools
The year is 2020 and no marketer is expected to do all the work manually. On the contrary, the Internet is packed with all sorts of content marketing apps and tools that can make your activities better and more effective. It is impossible to name so many platforms in one post, but we can point out our favorite solutions:
- Google Trends: If you want to stay up to date and write about the hottest topics, make sure to use Google Trends to discover the most popular themes.
- CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: Many users choose whether to keep reading or not based on titles. CoSchedule will help you to design interesting headlines for each post.
- Google Calendar: You also need to make a schedule of online activities, so why wouldn’t you use a free platform such as Google Calendar?
- Survey Monkey: The easiest way to discover the needs of the target audience is to ask them directly through online surveys.
- Canva: It’s a valuable resource for marketers who focus on visual formats.
- Hootsuite: It is an all-encompassing social media marketing platform suitable for teams of all sizes.
- MailChimp: This is one of the most popular email automation tools worldwide.
4. Give Users a Consistent Multichannel Experience
Another important trend is to provide users with a consistent experience across all channels of communication.
Keep in mind that modern consumers browse the Internet on different devices and frequently switch between laptops, smartphones, desktop computers, and tablets. Besides that, they consume content via email, websites, social media, and mobile apps.
In such circumstances, it is necessary to publish content consistently and make it recognizable regardless of the channel of communication. That way, you can help the business grow steadily from a long-term perspective.
5. Optimize Content for Voice Searches
A lot of marketers are still not aware of this fact, but voice searches are getting increasingly popular among modern consumers. Many reports prove this statement:
- According to Google, 20% of all searches are already voice-powered.
- Another study claims that nearly 50% of all searches will be voice-generated in 20202.
- Almost 20% of all voice search queries are triggered by a set of 25 keywords.
The last stat is particularly important for content creators because it explains how to design posts for voice searches. The point is to craft articles answering the basic 5W+H questions: Who does what, where, when, why, and how?
Users rely on voice queries to acquire information quickly and effortlessly, so you should indulge them by answer the basic set of questions concisely and directly. Try to do it in the first few paragraphs of your posts because it will improve webpage ranking among voice-based search results. That way, you will maximize the effect of voice optimization and help the content reach more users.
6. Personalize Content
Personalization is a major trend in digital marketing because people don’t want to consume generic content anymore. On the contrary, they demand highly customized content that perfectly suits their needs, values, and personal interests.
For example, Netflix is able to save over $1 billion every year thanks to the personalized content recommendations that match users’ previous interactions with the company. You can do more or less the same thing simply by automating marketing activities and tailoring content for each follower in particular.
Take a look at email personalization. According to the report, more than 80% of marketers have reported an increase in open rates through email personalization. Bearing in mind that emails represent one of the most popular communication channels globally, you should impress subscribers through personalization.
Using their names in opening lines is a must, but you must do more than that. The whole purpose of personalization is to analyze a recipient’s earlier interactions with your messages and deliver content that you know would fit his/her needs and expectations.
7. Encourage UGC
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful marketing force that brings businesses two very practical advantages.
First of all, it helps you to outsource content creation and produce more content while saving time and energy. Secondly, the strategy will increase the efficiency of your business because 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions.
Almost every business out there organizes social media contests to drive engagement and inspire the audience to create unique content. You should do the same thing from time to time and offer small perks and incentives to the fans who come up with the best brand-related posts.
You don’t even need to invest too much in UGC. All it takes is to provide some free samples or product trials to your audience. Sometimes it is even enough to publicly acknowledge agile followers by re-sharing their content.
Conclusion
Content creation is a precious marketing tactic, but the sheer number of competitors forces you to stay on top of the latest solutions and cutting-edge technologies. In this post, we discussed the top seven content marketing trends for 2020. Which one do you believe to be the most important?
