Content marketing is one of the core elements of digital marketing and makes up one of the three main pillars of Search Engine Optimisation (the other two being coding and backlinks).
As such it is a vital focus of attention for anyone in marketing, as without it, it is very difficult to claim that you are effectively active at all. It fuels all marketing communications, providing the raw material for all comms channels and platforms, and forms the major part of a marketers arsenal of weapons.
I want to share with you what’s happening in the world of content marketing, especially the trends, so that your content can be up-to-date and relevant.
The creation of content has always been the focus of major expenditure and attention, as the channels and platforms used can simply be seen as hygiene factors: we all know how they work, so there’s no reason to think they should not be used to best advantage in all cases.
The key thing to remember with content creation is to be interesting, relevant, and if possible, different. The key trend to note for 2022 is that there’s so much out there, there’s no point in having ‘me-too’ content. And it’s not an easy task. It has been estimated that the average new car purchase involves 900 digital interactions. Yes, you heard right: 900!
There’s a useful model, RACE, which is all about the customer journey:
- Reach
- Act
- Convert
- Engage
Your content creation should all have these in mind so that when you are preparing to communicate content, you can easily segment your audience – rasa.com is helpful for this.
So what are the trends?
Guest Spots can be helpful on social media for reaching new prospects. We’re seeing increasing use of these, as influencer marketing becomes ubiquitous: in recent years it has become more and more sophisticated and important, driving the effectiveness of comms for a large range of products. For prospects, where quality is hard to ascertain, influencers will do it for them.
For action, there’s a strong trend for (and I definitely recommend) the use of quizzes rather than digital brochures to convert prospects. Think of those 900 interactions again!
Convert visitors with a call to action (CTAs). So many content types simply do not have one, but my personal take is that marketers have at last woken up to this and there seems to be an increasing trend to incorporate CTAs more often now – about time too!
Engagement with respondents to your content raises all sorts of interesting challenges too. It’s amazing how many marketing departments ignore the importance and potential value of good quality engagement. Apart from the value to the readers, Google looks at your answers and somewhere deep in the bowels of the Google machine there’s an algorithm checking the quality and relevance of what you write!
So pick up on these trends and watch them become mainstream during 2022. Your content marketing will just get better and better!
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