5 Content Marketing Trends Your Competitors are Religiously Following

There is a popular saying goes in the digital marketing world that “Content is the King” and it is not merely a phrase anymore, it has become an integral part for a majority of digital marketers today. Content is the core of the connection between your brand and your customers. It acts as the foundation of building your brand awareness, improving audience engagement and it usually costs less than other forms of marketing.

Over the years, content marketing has made remarkable changes in the world of digital marketing and proved its effectiveness by delivering outstanding results to marketers. While a few can still doubt the efficacy of content marketing, the channels, tactics, and tools marketers use to create and distribute contents will continue to evolve in the coming years.

While most of the brands and businesses have started using content marketing, it is really important for you to connect with your audience in an authentic and human way by producing contents that deepen the relationships and provide an exponential increase in the results.

Especially when the entire world is undergoing a major crisis, your digital marketing strategies during the Coronavirus pandemic should be quickly revisited so that they become more customer-centric. And without the right content marketing plan in place, your entire digital marketing may get stalled.

The following 5 content marketing trends will help you garner the maximum benefits out of your content marketing strategy in 2019 and beyond.

1. Content Personalization and Interactivity

With so much content out there on the internet, it’s becoming increasingly harder to reach and engage today’s readers. This is why most of the brands are leaning toward a personalized and interactive content strategy that makes a lasting impression on their audience and drives more engagement.

Personalized and interactive content works as a two-way conversation that allows the audience to actively participate rather than passively consuming the content. A study by Demand Metric found that the 80% brands that used personalized content marketing have seen more growth in their sales opportunities. So, the more data you have about your customers, the better chance you have to create a meaningful content marketing strategy.

Today, most of the businesses are using analytics for customer segmentation in order to target specific customer groups in a better way. When all major social networking sites have a distinct structure to share and promote contents, most of them let you personalize contents either with hashtags or location settings. So, creating and promoting personalized content in this manner will make your content marketing campaign more relevant and customer focused.

2. Content Optimization for Voice Search

Voice search has already been impacting SEO for the past few years. Since SEO is a part of content marketing, marketers simply cannot ignore various voice-based searches. Lifestyles and mobile culture have changed the way buyers look for what they need and your content marketing has to evolve, too.

Today, voice search accounts for at least 20% of all searches and is still growing with every passing day. More and more consumers are using voice search technologies like Google Assistant, Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, and others. So it’s natural that brands would want to incorporate common customer questions in their contents that will answer the user queries in a conversational tone using long tail keywords contextually.

3. Micro-Influencers

Influencer marketing is not a new thing; however, it’s often misunderstood by companies and marketers. Companies have traditionally relied on celebrity endorsements and advertisements to increase their brand awareness. However, with the rise of multiple social media channels and an increasing number of influential individuals, today, you don’t need celeb names to promote your brand.

Studies by MuseFind have shown that 92% of consumers trust industry influencers more than celebrity endorsements. So, instead of looking for star figures, think about local and niche influencers in your industry. You can team up with the niche experts for positive reviews, promotions, or shout-outs about your products on their blog, social media channels, and other online outlets. This way they may become your best brand advocates.

So paying attention to micro-influencer marketing may prove to be a game-changer for your business. It is undoubtedly one of the fastest ways to build brand awareness and make true connections with your target audience.

4. Super Niche Contents

No matter which industry you are in, there is probably a content saturation around your niche. This means that most of your competitors are publishing similar contents alike you to target and reach the same customers. Hence, it’s getting increasingly harder to grow the contents’ visibility. To address this issue, super niche content is the key to stand out in an increasingly crowded niche.

Start by identifying the super-niche of your industry. Then narrow your content focus and create a specific niche based, extremely creative, and engaging content that will go viral. For example, instead of writing about “the importance of outsourcing”, write about “why the healthcare sector needs to give more attention to various departmental outsourcing”.

So if done well, niche contents can turn your audience on and make them feel like they are a part of your community. Though it requires more work and research on what your audience wants, the returns are highly rewarding.

5. Live Video Contents

Since last few years, brands have been using videos in content marketing. Every day millions of videos are made just about on any topic you can think of. Though videos are not completely new in the digital world, the live video contents are getting continuous importance and growing at a rapid pace.

Live videos generally add an element of fun to an already interactive form of communication. For example, Facebook users spend 3X more time watching live videos than traditional videos. The popularity of live videos is increasing because of its raw nature without edits, which create an intimate communication with your audience.

To use live videos and engage your audience you can host live Q&A sessions, live interviews, webinars, product demonstrations, live unboxing, conduct events, conferences, etc.

Wrapping up:

With every passing year, new content marketing trends and tactics come to the surface that may change a lot of facets you planned earlier. While it is important to work on the fundamentals of content marketing, it is equally imperative to follow these new trends and capitalize on them.