Content marketing is ever-evolving. To achieve the best results in your content marketing strategy, keeping pace with the current trends is crucial. What is the future of content marketing, and what trends can you expect in 2023?
Published on Oct 13, 2022
Content marketing is now more important than ever. By providing relevant and valuable content to your target audience, you can attract prospects, convert leads, and retain existing customers to increase your revenue and grow your business.
High-quality content is the driving force behind many aspects of marketing, such as SEO, PPC, or social media marketing.
Without valuable content, search engines can’t rank your site well, you can’t create attractive ads or social media posts, and on and on it goes.
In the past years, it has become clear that this is why content marketing is the future of marketing as a whole and keeping up with its trends is an easy way to stay ahead of your competition.
Content is king. But how to market it so that the consumers truly enjoy it?
Let’s take a look at the following 5 content marketing trends that will be applicable in the next year, and that will help you meet and exceed your marketing goals.
The attention span of people online is alarmingly low, and the marketers’ fight against it can be challenging at times. To keep the audience entertained, marketers have to create engaging content that’s motivating for the visitors to consume.
Such content can be a carefully structured blog post, interactive polls, games and quizzes (more on that later), or—you guessed it, a video.
Videos are attractive for many reasons. Humans are highly visual beings, and videos are usually very visually charged. They also combine graphics with text, speech, music, and other elements, which keeps the audience entertained and stimulates the brain better than just plain text.
Video ideas you can try out may include webinars, video podcasts, product demos, customer interviews, or various types of shorter-format videos.
Surely you’ve noticed that especially short-form videos on social media have been on the rise. They bring all the benefits of regular-form videos, and on top of that, they conform to our demanding attention span and deliver information in an easily digestible package.
The most common short-form videos now include:
The ideas for short-form video content are endless. You can jump on a viral trend or participate in an industry challenge, show your audience the making of one of your projects with a behind-the-scenes video, or share the life in your office via a mini vlog.
These videos are a great form of authentic content that will give your audience a glimpse into your company culture and show the real faces behind your brand’s logo.
Looking into which platforms work the best for you and trying out some video content for yourself might be a great start to revamping your content marketing strategy for 2023.
Apart from the length of your videos, there’s another element you should pay attention to – captions. More and more people online are watching videos on the go and without sound.
Captions will make the video more accessible for those who prefer this way of viewing, as well as any viewers with possible hearing impairment, ensuring a full video experience for everyone.
Having closed captions on your videos is also great for your SEO. As Semrush states, captions are indexed and are a solid source of keywords for search engines that crawl them.
Still not convinced you need video in your content marketing strategy? Here are some stats by Wyzowl and their State of Video Marketing report 2022, where 582 respondents submitted their answers regarding the use of video in marketing.
In the report for this year, the marketers responded that videos had helped them:
Apart from marketing professionals, Wyzowl’s survey also included responses from online consumers. Here are some key findings:
According to Twitter for Business, there’s an 84% year-over-year increase in watch time on Twitter alone, and other social media are no exception. People online watch an average of 19 hours of video a week and are twice as likely to share videos than any other type of content.
Because it’s easily consumable on the go and convenient for today’s busy consumers, it’s safe to say that video is the future of content marketing and is definitely here to stay.
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 75% of marketers agree that educating the audience is the primary reason for implementing interactive content. Some other highly voted reasons are:
For these and many other reasons, interactive content will continue to be a major trend in 2023 and will likely continue to be essential for years to come. Why? The answer is simple – humans crave interaction.
Your audience doesn’t always want to just passively consume information. If you embed quizzes, assessment tools, questionnaires, interactive infographics, or games in your content, you’ll allow your audience to engage with your brand in a less conventional way and give your users the chance to provide their input.
Engaging content that requires interaction will also make visitors stay on your site longer, leading to improved SEO metrics. On top of that, this type of content is a clever way to get a better understanding of customer needs as well.
Surveys are a great example. By using surveys, you can get feedback on your products or services, but also gain useful information about your audience, such as the demographics or their interests and wants.
Everyone is on social media, and that’s why it’s crucial for businesses to establish a strong social media presence. To do that, teams have to realize that different platforms have different users and are used for different purposes.
For example, HubSpot found out that marketers like to use TikTok for bite-sized educational information and Twitter for quick news. Also, platforms that emphasize visual content, like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, are especially popular among younger consumers.
Whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, consumers use their favorite platforms not only to connect with each other but also to follow the brands they like.
According to a study by Sprout Social, consumers agree that social media gives businesses the best opportunity to connect with their audiences.
As the study shows, 72% of respondents feel more connected to brands when they can consume information directly from their employees. On top of that, 70% of respondents feel more connected when a brand’s CEO is active on social media.
People online generally prefer specificity over vagueness. In this case, consumers on social media can see real faces sharing valuable information, rather than just the logo of an organization, and can relate to the message more easily.
The connection businesses can create through social media nurtures customer loyalty, which then has a direct impact on business revenue.
As the study concludes, 57% of consumers will increase their spending with the brand they feel connected to, and 76% will buy from them over a competitor.
Effective content marketing strategy can’t do without evergreen content. Such content will continue to be crucial in the upcoming year, as it provides value to the consumers, improves your website’s authority, and creates a great opportunity for backlinks, helping your SEO.
What classifies as evergreen content?
Besides boosting your organic traffic and creating trust, evergreen content is also a great way to attract qualified leads. Try making some of your high-quality resources downloadable in exchange for filling out an e-mail address, and watch the number of your customers grow!
On the other hand, don’t hyper-focus on evergreen content only. Trendy topics also play an essential role in your content marketing strategy.
For the best results, combine both to attract visitors to your site right at the moment with current trends and guarantee their return with timeless topics.
Voice search is becoming more and more prominent. Instead of typing keywords only, such as “best cafés London,” people now often ask search engines by voice and in full questions – “What are the best cafés in London?”.
Optimizing your content for voice search will make sure your site is ready to provide high-quality and accurate responses to relevant questions users might have.
Where to start? Here’s a short checklist you can follow:
It’s safe to say that voice search is here to stay. Optimizing for and ranking high in voice search is a great way to reach more people and boost your brand awareness and authority in 2023.
What do you think about the future of content marketing in 2023? Are you already focusing on a strong social media presence and crafting interactive content to educate your audience? Or is it something you’re just about to try out?
Connect with us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram and let us know—we’d love to hear from you!
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