What Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know to Succeed in 2018

Content marketing has come a long way. It has managed to prove itself over the last years as a keystone to a successful marketing campaign, by pulling in organic traffic and creating reasons for users to visit your site more frequently than when they want to buy your product. But we haven’ yet found the end of the rainbow.

Mainly, that’s down to the online landscape still evolving to make proper use such things as content marketing, with some of the biggest players changing what they’re offering to accommodate it.

So what, then can we expect from content marketing in 2018?

Video will remain huge

It’s not really that surprising. A lot of people prefer video to text. That’s not less true this year than last. So, if you haven’t yet embraced videos then this has to be the year you finally do so.

Here are some statistics to help convince you:

• Video have a 137% more organic reach than photos do on Facebook.
• YouTube reports mobile video consumption rises 100% every year.
• Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined.

So yeah, they might be a bit more work than you’re used to, but that can no longer be an excuse for why you have not embraced this technology. Go make some videos!

Social media is changing their formula

In the past, social media is what we used to distribute our content marketing. That’s now changing, with the social media platforms looking to house their own. It’s an understandable move, as these giants would rather have users stay on their site for longer.

Nonetheless, it will require that we decide whether we want to make the switch with them. After all, chances are that the social media giants will prefer content on their own networks strongly to that found outside of them.

If you do decide to publish on the platforms themselves, then you will need to be considered how you’re going to display the same content on different platforms. After all, different platforms have different audiences, different expectations and different ways of formatting your content.

Great is a better than good

Most content creators create content that is decent to good and think that they’ve got a useful strategy there. The thing is, that’s not how the internet works. Articles online obey what is known as a power law. In case you’re not familiar with those, they’re the ones that are flat to the right and then suddenly curve up drastically as they approach zero.

The result? A very small percentage of articles will receive almost all of the attention, while the vast majority won’t get any. And as decent to good sits comfortably in that vast majority band, that means that will not get you the action you’re hoping for. 

A much better strategy is to focus on creating truly outstanding pieces, which then serve as magnets for your audience. From there, they can then read more of the content you’re offering (or, for that matter, buy your product).

To do that, what you need to do is invest serious effort into articles that fill a much-needed niche. Similarly, when an article is doing well, you don’t just leave it sitting there but try your best to make it longer, better and more useful to your readers; it’s like creating the best dissertation writing to get a Master’s Degree. After all, articles that are doing well will draw a lot more people into your website with even a small push in quality than a new article will probably ever manage to attract.

Diversify winning content

Another strategy that’s going to pay off well in 2018 is to take content that has already done well and then diversifying it into another form content. So, take a piece of text and turn it into a video or take a podcast and make it into an infographic.

The big advantage of doing this is that different people prefer consuming media in different ways. In this way, you manage to get that message out to a much broader audience segment. You can get both the readers and the video watchers, for example. And as you know the content is already a winner, you’re far more likely to attract more attention.

Some formats to consider are:

• Blogs and articles
• Email marketing
• infographics, brochures and hard copy marketing materials
• Social media posts
• Videos (live or otherwise)
• White papers and e-books
• Testimonials, Customer delight and knowledge sharing
• Podcasts

Go for gold

For the rest it’s just a matter of keeping going. The bid advantage of content marketing campaigns is that as your amount of content grows you’ll get more attention for each new piece. After all, people will notice and search engines take sites with more content that have existed for longer more seriously.

So the simple process of keeping going, even if it’s not at full tilt, will pay off eventually. Of course, you’ll do even better if you put some serious effort into creating original and meaningful content. At the same time, continuing to move forward is most certainly better than doing nothing at all.