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Industry-wide studies on consumer behavior from the Cohley Insights team.
People have been speculating about the future of content marketing since the beginning of content marketing, which, by our estimates, has been around since the dinosaurs. That’s a lot of future to talk about! But what does it mean in the context of the digital age, where everything is moving quick, and there appears to be no room for the Don Draper style of copywriting?
We’re going to cover how content marketing got us here, what’s in store for the future, and what the next “Big Thing” in copywriting is.
CMI defines content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” So all in all, it’s about using your presence online to create a brand that will attract customers.
Note that we didn’t say “Words” or “Articles” - Content is more than that. As a content platform that helps our customers test every day, we look at content from a 10 thousand foot view and include everything your brand puts on social media into our definition - yes that means your Instagram account, it means your videos, it means your TikTok that you are just starting to use - we see you! Keep at it!
We wrote a whole post on why content marketing is important, and it came down to 5 key points. Content marketing helps:
And content marketing is consistently and continuously evolving. This, however doesn’t mean it’s purpose is any less clear - help people understand your brand enough to cause conversion.
So that leaves us in a very speculative position, where we can ask ourselves - what DOES the future of content marketing and blogging look like?
We’ve distilled our perspective to four key areas to focus your content in 2021 and beyond.
Creating topical authority around your brand’s values is going to be a big factor in determining who wins in content. When we talk about topical content, we’re talking about creating content around one topic in particular - your brand. The future of content is all about building content about what you do best and being open and honest with your audience about that.
One thing about content that never changes is how quickly you should be jumping on trends and current events. Being able to make bold statements and create great content that resonates with your audience in the moment is all about having courage. As the world moves to more connected content through social media, we’re going to see the need to be more aggressive with content creation increase. Couple this with still having an original take on the trend, we’re looking at the need for some pretty suped up marketing and creative departments!
Memorable and interactive content is the way of the future. It’s not enough to just have an idle Facebook page. The goal for future content is to build community and be where your people are. Hubspot’s main message is to meet your audience where they are, and this has become much more important as we see continued shift after the pandemic towards more digital forms of marketing, and as different platforms rise and fall - namely TikTok. The emergence of TikTok in the social entertainment space in a time where traditional creative collaboration has forced marketers to adopt a less polished, more realistic brand presence. Creating content that engages users on a variety of media platforms is going to be more successful than engaging with users on one social platform.
Speaking of new and emerging platforms… Video and voice were the new things in 2008, and in 2021 and beyond, they’re the norm. With TikTok focusing on short form (60 seconds or less) videos, and Clubhouse focusing on live voice conversations, there’s a lot out there that requires more than the written word. More than that, they require a mobile first mindset! All content you create should consider mobile screens to truly perform.
With that all said, what kind of content should you be creating in the next year? We’ll take you through some of our top picks for truly unique and boundary pushing content.
User generated content sounds like it’s a no-touch content option, but it actually requires a lot of creativity to reuse and repurpose user generated content. User generated content is content generated about a brand outside the brand’s content generators. It can include everything from snaps on social media to reviews and mentions online. We see UGC continuing to climb in importance as new platforms emerge and creators from all over the world start using their in-pocket megaphones to bring in new audiences. Smartphone companies are continuously creating a world where photography, videography, and sound marketing are democratized, and companies should be using these mini-megaphones to their advantage. You should be in the UGC game, and it’s really easy to get started.
Our post on rethinking UGC walks through how we at Cohley help our clients utilize UGC in effective ways.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - video is the way of the future. Video content is not going away any time soon, in fact, there are whole social platforms dedicated to video - YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and it continues to grow every single second. So why aren’t you doing video? More so than YouTube, the rise of TikTok and short form video content on other platforms makes it clear that users want to engage with smart, funny, and interesting content in a video format. What makes video exciting and why we’ve included it on our future of marketing list is that effective online video content is changing. It no longer has to be this highly polished, over-edited piece of content that costs a lot of money to create and distribute. Video in this day and age is all about authenticity and exposing sides of your business that you wouldn’t ordinarily, and that builds trust. One of our favorite TikTok accounts is the Washington Post account where there’s one creator, the content isn’t highly polished, but it is still informative enough to consistently be relevant. Our client Adore Me found huge success with TikTok last year:
It’s no secret that email has one of the highest ROI of any performance marketing channel, and it’s going to stay that way for a long time. Email marketing is an opt in service that allows brands to reach customers who are already familiar with and have an interest in their brand. We’ve included it in our future of marketing list because testing emails is the way of the future. Testing email marketing is all about segmentation and finding your niche. With so many brands vying for attention in someone’s inbox, it can be hard to break through the noise and clutter of the spam and promotions folder, that’s why testing engagement in emails is an important step to fully capitalizing on your captive audience list.
Podcasts are becoming more ubiquitous and almost every brand has either produced, advertised, or appeared on one in their lifetime. Long-form spoken content is an easy way to express your brand values in a way that is low touch for your audience.