Content marketing has been a popular approach among brands these days, for marketing. Some brands have started their own blogs, whereas others hire companies and have their set content marketing budget for the year.
Content marketing was once a market where producing large volume of content was dominated, but as per the scenario now, the diversity of content formats and the ability to engage the audience across multiple platforms is the more dominant way of content marketing.
Increasing Returns on Investment and dominating the market can be easily achieved by levying these seven content marketing trends for 2017.
1. Consumers are ready to pay for educating content
The internet has always been the first preferred reference of any sort of information or a knowledgeable piece. The most preferred information is the one which is free of cost than the paid ones. The evident example was that of Torrent website, which was highly popular for downloading media free of cost.
There’s a huge volume of content developed every day over the internet but this also calls for a high demand of accurate information. Internet is like an ocean of information, which can be both, fake and true. The information that is accurate and backed with facts is sold the most.
There are examples of people like Gael and Mark, from Authority Hacker, who packaged the content on their blog in the form of an eBook, which had some free bonus lessons and the rest of it was paid. They sold it to their audience for a nominal amount. This helped them to make $2,500/month in passive income.
So, making money online depends solely on how accurate your content is and how well you market it.
2. A Mobile Friendly Blog
Today, most of the time is spent on smart phones. It is always suggestive to make your blog responsive and mobile-friendly. This helps your audience to access your information wherever and whenever necessary. Your blog must be focused to target the dominating mobile market.
Even if your content is highly engaging and a great piece of work, but not mobile-friendly, it won’t earn you enough. Nobody likes to switch their screen just for a piece of information that they can easily avail on net through other sites or blogs.
Failure in enhancing the customer experience makes your business less relevant.
3. Interactive Content
Let’s say there are about 100 websites that deliver content regarding staying fit or essential skin care routines. Ever wondered why only a few grab the readers’ attention and locks their interest? As the new age consumer is becoming smart, he needs everything perfected already, in terms of value for time and money, both. As a reader, I would invest my time reading your article and I would thereby, expect it to be captivating and knowledgeable. Both these features are a part of interesting interactive content. Keeping the readers engaged through interaction, is a way a writer creates an aura of virtual conversation with the reader. An interactive content keeps the readers participated throughout, building a curiosity gap amongst them, and it overall comes out as a better experience than merely reciting the article which yields no good, both ways.
It is extremely important to make your content interactive as it has to grab the attention of your audience. As per a research carried out by the Content Marketing Institute, it was found that more than Eighty-one percent of the marketers believed in interactive content as a way for grabbing more attention than the usual static content. Hence, the brands are now using quiz, contests, assessments and configurations in their articles to make them more interactive.
4. Live Streaming Videos
Live Streaming Videos make your blog look more authentic and relatable and offers you to interact well with your audience, whether you’re a startup or an entrepreneur who has just started or a consultant. Cost associated with video production decreases with the use of live streaming. Live streaming is highly popular due to the unfiltered and unedited content. High conversion rate, engagement of the viewer towards the content and higher awareness of your blog is created through live streaming.
Watching the content as a live video gives the viewer a greater sense of realism and enables brands to put across their message based on the engagement of the viewer.
5. Purpose Driven Marketing
Purpose-Driven Content Marketing is defined as a tool for the brands to create a better market and bond with the consumer, based on common interest by the Content Marketing Groups. The importance of “giving back” has been a major point in business today. But there are yet many brands who haven’t been able to figure out a way of how to create a content that is engaging and motivating altogether. It is imperative to create an accurate strategy and execute it in an innovative and unrefined way that benefits both the writer and the audience.
6. Native Advertising
As per Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, native advertising is marketing practice that doesn’t disturb the experience of the user and offers useful information which is similar in format to the content available on advertising agents, like a banner. Adblock helps users to have a smooth experience online. In such cases, native advertising helps by allowing brands to use storytelling skills to create quality driven content that reaches out to new audience, without disturbing the current or existing user experience. This strategy majorly focuses on marketing to the right influencer and further, it aims at creating awareness among the followers.
7. Virtual reality
Virtual reality is the most hyped topic in the tech domain because of the buzz it created. VR is the next big thing in the Content Market of 2017, be it hotels offering a tangible experience or test driving cars. The VR is termed as the empathy machine. It lets your customers to experience your brand rather than making them listen or read what you have to say.
Let’s take the example of Jaguar, the official car for Wimbledon. It created a virtual experience for its fans to feel how it would be to step in the historical court and to experience being the Wimbledon Champion, Andy Murray. Brands are now trying to involve their customers in experience than mere stories. VR is more expensive than the traditional media but is also an exceptional way of engaging customers with a unique experience.
Besides, there are brilliant developments happening in the content marketing industry. Businesses must evolve their strategies accordingly so as to capture a wider audience. Content Marketing is a wide industry so it is better not to adopt all the new trends and to excel in a few.
AUTHOR BIO :
Isha Singh, an avid app developer is trying to take advantage of the technical knowledge she has to help people gain a foothold in the digitized world. Read her sharing her views on web and app development, the latest being Magento Extension development.
