The world of ‘content’ is constantly evolving, bringing in new ideas, trends, and unspoken rules every year. Effective content distribution as an integral component of your marketing strategy can help you reach your desired target audience in the most compelling and engaging manner.
The new year 2019 is a perfect time to look at the current trends in content marketing and set inspiring goals. At the moment, you can see radical changes and updates in concepts, such as influencer marketing, augmented reality, video content – while there are hordes of new trends dominating the digital marketing space. The tactics, tools, and tricks change every single day; however, the objective of content marketing in 2019 remains the same – to generate quality leads through quality content.
Taking into consideration the indomitable significance of content in digital marketing, marketers strive to harness the newest approaches to present brand or product information in a manner that is relevant, valuable and interesting to their audiences. As the bar for quality rises and innovative thinkers put an interesting spin on older concepts, you need watch out for content marketing trends that will dominate 2019.
So, let’s dive into the top 6 content marketing trends to look out for this year, and how you can leverage them to improve user engagement and conversion.
Content marketing trends to watch out for in 2019
Dozens of fads come and go every year, but one thing that remains constant is content. According to a recent estimate, the content marketing industry is expected to grow to a whopping $400 billion by 2021. As content marketing continues to evolve and mature over time, these six trends will help you create and distribute content effectively in 2019.
1. Τransparency, authenticity, and delivering value through content
Originality, precision, and value have always been the core of content marketing. However, in 2019, adhering to these standards will become a major challenge for marketers. This means, if the piece of content does not showcase the mission of your company, your brand story, or the value that you wish to deliver to your target audience, then it might not show up in the search results.
Authenticity or originality in content is a key differentiating factor that drives consumers to a purchase decision, says 86% of them. 94% of consumers affirm they would remain loyal to a brand, while 73% of them would even pay more if the product promises transparency. It goes without saying that in 2019, marketers creating inauthentic and ambiguous content will suffer badly.
With the objective to deliver increased value, search engine giant Google now gives more importance to content that is relevant to the user’s search intent. If your content does not live up to the expectations of the searcher, it may fail to garner a high page ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). And you can very well understand the repercussions of this.
Here’s how you can utilize the trend for transparency, authenticity and value to your benefit:
- Create content that aligns with the company’s overall mission and brand message.
- Engages your target audience better with the brand.
- Delivers value to help customers achieve their objectives pertaining to your offer.
2. Niche content will gain more significance
In 2019, trying to be the jack of all trades won’t get you anywhere good. It is expected that 2019 will be the year of niche content. Do not go too broad; instead, choose a particular industry to target and produce content that caters to the needs of the customers in that specific segment. As you delve deeper into the niche market, your business will broaden.
In rhis era of market maturity and saturation, you need a more focused content marketing strategy. As the number of marketers is growing at a rapid pace, consumers are now being exposed to more and more content. This only means that you have to stand out with creative, unique and in-depth niche content.
This is what you can do:
- Identify sub-niches in your target industry or market, and brainstorm newer ideas to present content in an interesting way.
- You can use advanced content marketing tools, like Curately, that help you create outstanding content just in few minutes. Curately provides an endless supply of fresh content that you can mix, mash and rework to create something new, original and engaging – targeted specifically to your industry. Using this tool, you can curate one-of-a-kind blog posts, lead magnets, articles, website content, and reports in a jiffy.
3. Content interactivity and personalization
Content quality and uniqueness have always been the key criteria for marketers. However, in 2019, you will see an increasing popularity in content that is personally-relevant and interactive.
Attracting customer’s attention is one of the biggest challenges that marketers face in today’s digital, mobile and social web. And the only way to grab one’s attention is through creating excellent-quality content that is personalized and relevant. Modern marketers have acknowledged the fact that high-quality, engaging content is a better means to attract and retain customers than exposing them to annoying offers and ads that are not relevant to them. Therefore, personalized content will be the key to engage your consumers more deeply with the brand, influencing them to take positive action.
Furthermore, interactive content helps enhance audience engagement, foster a sense of credibility and trustworthiness, and enables you to stay ahead of the competition.
Here are some ideas on how you can leverage this 2019 trend to its full potential:
- Engage your audience in a discussion or ask them for their valuable feedback regarding their experience with your brand. This can be done via email, social media, or any other interactive platform.
- Live videos on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram is another way to engage and interact with your target audience.
- Use powerful & automated page builder tools, like Scriptly, to create landing pages, webinar pages, and sales pages with high-conversion potential. It takes just a few minutes to build pages that are highly interactive, engaging and can easily drive paid traffic.
4. Long-form content will continue to steal the show
No matter what experts have to say, long-form content is still the key highlight of content creation and marketing. Search engines like Google are rewarding lengthier content with high page rankings to serve its audience with credible information. In contrast to what most marketers believe, modern consumers like reading meatier content that provides exhaustive answers to what they have in mind. Long-form content can be anything from 2,000 to 8,000 words, depending on the topic you wish to cover.
An in-depth, authoritative content gives the impression to the search engines that you are an expert in the subject. Search engines like to offer the value to their users, rewarding you with a higher ranking on the result pages.
Key highlights of this trend are:
- Simply creating an 8,000-word beast is not enough; it should provide valuable and comprehensive information that the readers can use a credible resource.
- For long-form content it is extremely challenging to hold onto the reader’s interest right from the beginning to its end. Make sure you make the post interesting with eye-catchy titles and sub-heads, images, interesting statistics, and infographics. This way your readers will love the content and want to share it or use it as a quality source of information. It is also a good way to build authority and get backlinks from top-ranking websites.
5. Effective content distribution will become more important than ever
As both the online and offline world has become increasingly congested, marketers are trying hard to find newer ways to bring their content in the forefront. Today, it is not enough to publish articles or create blog posts and make them search engine friendly. You need to have a focused content distribution strategy. Keeping this in mind, you will see newer content marketing tactics in 2019 while the old concepts will get a new spin for profitable results.
Here are some techniques you can use to boost your content distribution strategy in 2019:
- Identify which platform is ideal for you. For beginners, social media is the best channel to harness. On the other hand, paid advertising campaigns are perfect to amplify your marketing efforts.
- Scriptly has built-in email autoresponder technology that helps you leverage email marketing to its full potential. Create engaging emails with eye-catchy subject lines and call-to-action that drive clicks. And all these can be put into your autoresponder to make a content distribution a breeze.
6. Importance of influencer marketing will grow in 2019
This is not surprising, right? Influencer marketing had gained tremendous popularity in 2018, and the trend is not going anywhere anytime soon. The reason? It works!
Today, consumers prefer taking informed purchase decisions based on what real consumers have to say and not what brands promote. Therefore, they are more likely to rely upon a trusted influencer when considering to buy a product. So it makes sense that marketers want to have an influencer strategy as an integral component of their business strategy.
In 2019, however, you would see influencer marketing getting more focused and consumer-driven. Rather than picking as many influencers as possible, the trend will be to undergo in-depth interviews and analyses to choose one who has authority in the field.
Here are the key takeaways from the trend:
- Have influencers as your ad hoc content creation team.
- Invest in influencers with a grand readership and audience. Also, focus on delivering a more personalized influencer marketing campaign.
As marketers continue to refine their strategies, the tepid content approach will no longer serve your purpose. Companies have to either embrace the top content marketing trends or fade away into irrelevance. Adopt the latest tools and software to make content creation and distribution more effective and seamless.