As a brand, knowing the content marketing trends to watch every year enables you to adjust your marketing and promotion strategies to achieve maximum exposure and engagement from your target market. You are more aware of what is to come so you can cope with how your market responds to your hard work in coming up with the best product or service offering to cater to their needs.
#1 Mobile Marketing
One of the content marketing trends to watch in 2016 is mobile marketing. Year after year, innovations in mobile technology are being made. Hardware and software enhancement have been enticing people to be more mobile with their daily tasks, and even their primary business functions. With this progress in technology in the lives of the people, marketers are constantly looking for ways to reach new audiences.
This content marketing trend has been around for a while. Putting this on your priority trends to watch is important because more people are understanding better the vitality of accessibility on mobile devices. Users find it convenient to be multitasking, especially being at one place doing something which may be totally unrelated with what they are doing on their mobile device.
Marketers should come up with better ways to communicate given this content marketing trend. People on the go would like to be informed at the fastest time, in real time if possible. They want to learn something or be entertained with information during momentary idle times of their day. Marketers should come up with creative ways to communicate with their target market, and get them engaged as well.
#2 Social Media
Social media will continue to become one of the most important marketing trends to watch. As with the presence of mobile marketing in today’s generation for a while, innovations in social media are growing to cope with the dynamic audience who access their platforms daily. Along with it goes the changes with the type of demographic who use various social media platforms for their various needs.
This trend is crucial because of the communication among users and information gathering from all the online sources. Given the said factors, marketers have seen opportunities to make those two an advantage to their strategies. Facebook is making Facebook Live Video more user-friendly and accessible to more users, Instagram is offering enticing advertising opportunities to various brands, and Snapchat is giving their users the ability to use Snapchat Story to build their brand better.
Social media is steadily becoming the primary source of breaking news, which contributes to this as an important trend to watch in 2016. Even news agencies get their content from social media and just develop the story later on. Still, this makes the people become more aware of what is going on faster than tuning into the television. Marketers should grab this opportunity to be present in all social media platforms they can possibly manage to maximize their information sharing potential.
#3 Influencer Marketing
Getting the best people to affect your niche or industry in an important way is another content marketing trend to watch. The reach of influencers can enable a brand to generate a faster return on investment. In a study conducted by McKinsey, brands who utilize this type of marketing had a 35% retention rate higher than paid advertisements. The former was also able to get a return on investment of $9.6/$1 in 2015, from $6.85 in 2014.
Having key persons as ambassadors for their brand makes this content marketing trend to watch worth it. Brands coordinate with these influencers to work with them to increase brand and offering awareness through the personal network of fans and followers. Social media and blogs are two of the most popular ways to communicate with the target market. This is similar to word-of-mouth marketing, but only in a more high-tech medium.
Along with this content marketing trend to watch is the ability to correctly identify the most relevant influencers to give you the results you want to achieve, and even go beyond that. There are several ways for this, and you can combine more than one to get the best people you can. One way is to be part of industry lectures and events, as this brings you closer to those who draw the biggest crowd and attention because of their influence.
#4 Automation
Automation is another content marketing trend to watch in 2016. Brands recognize that some of their consumers and target markets have multiple social media accounts, some only have one, and some solely access their blog or website only. These factors have made marketers realize that they should be able to distribute content wisely among all their online platforms for optimizing brand awareness. Management of all these accounts is very challenging, hence automation is on the rise to aid in this marketing aspect.
This content marketing trend to watch saves the business their valuable resources as one person can manage content scheduling and distribution instead of having various point persons for each platform. It also saves time as the person can easily coordinate whatever it is they would want to be automated in just a few clicks. Financial resources can be allotted for equally important aspects of the business as the subscription to automation tools encompasses several social media management elements.
#5 Long-form, Connected Content
A content marketing trend to watch in 2016 is the shift towards long-form, connected content. Changes in search algorithm have caused a more important view on semantic search and long-form content. Google’s Knowledge Graph has been around since 2012 but has turned into a notable content marketing feat. This has aided in providing search users with better answers to their long-tail search queries.
This content marketing trend to watch in 2016 is being enhanced by Google. They are developing the use of artificial intelligence or AI to facilitate search queries. 15% of the unique searches was processed using AI in 2015, and will continue to increase this year. This trend provides users instant answers and relevant information to common questions being asked. Attempts by digital assistants (such as Siri and Cortana) are being made to deliver the same type of answers and information; therefore, content marketers should also be aware that they would have to look into more difficult and more complicated topics since the simple ones can be answered by AI.
For marketers, this content marketing trend means that the content being uploaded has to connect with other related content. You must be able to identify correctly all the possible keywords that comes up in searches, and put a minimum percentage for those who to go into your content. This should be done without affecting the continuity and flow of the whole.
#6 Visual Mediums
A rise in the demand for visual mediums is one of the content marketing trends to watch in 2016. One reason for this trend is the increase in Internet speed and wireless connections, hence allowing online users more capacity to view videos and images even on their mobile devices. As people are also becoming more engaged in multitasking on a regular basis, users want to be communicated with in the fastest and easiest way to understand possible. Competition among content writers is also increasing, which makes it more challenging for all of them to attract and retain their target audience.
CEO of Content Science Colleen Jones foresees this content marketing trend to watch impactful, ambitious, and unique visuals. Videos will become more enticing especially to mobile users as the continuous development in mobile technology and data servicing increases. Infographics are also very effective as they present in a creative, attractive, and easily understandable manner data and information on a particular topic. There are guides and tools available online to help you create both.
#7 Social Media Publishing Options
User Generated Content (UGC) is another trend to watch in 2016. As it is called, UGC is any form of online content created by the users of an online service or system. Users are empowered to host pages and channels, therefore allowing social media platforms to garner millions of free content published daily.
There are several platforms you might consider dwelling into, or developing your brand in, as this content marketing trend to watch in 2016 gains popularity. YouTube is among those who first realized that this is the future of content marketing. Facebook has introduced Instant Articles to allow marketers get more visibility and hits. Google is also coping with the times, and is now introducing its own version.
Wrapping it up
These 7 content marketing trends to watch in 2016 is a great guide for you to steer your marketing strategies in the right direction. Your target audience is dynamic, and so should you. Take that step forward now and be among the first to trend in your niche and industry.