If you conduct a content audit right now, you’ll likely find that a small amount of your content is responsible for nearly all of your results. Why is that?

Reasons vary from consumer appetites for content shifting, that your content marketing competition is getting better, and Google is rewarding only the highest impact pieces.  To stay ahead of the pack, or get there in the first place, you need to understand where content marketing is heading and consistently adjust your strategy accordingly.

So, where is content marketing going? The best data we have points to following changes and trends:

Cluster Topics

How do you currently come up with blog topics? If you’ve been content marketing for years, you may remember a time where you could write about a basic topic in your industry and get immediate results.

For example, if you’re a residential construction company, you may have published a blog titled, “What are Bungalows?”. You may have shot right up to the top of Google for people searching “what is a bungalow” or “why buy a bungalow?” The blog could stand by itself and generate results, no problem.

These days, it’s likely that all of your competitors have a blog on what bungalows are. Coming up with a basic blog idea is not enough, and even something new and timely may not catch attention. Now, Google wants to see you create a network of content around those basic topics, which we call topic clusters.

So, you need to create content that expands on your bungalow topic and link them together. Your bungalow piece is the wheel, and several other blogs must be the spokes. For example, you could create:

  • Why Seniors Prefer Bungalows
  • When Were Bungalows First Developed?
  • Can Young Families Benefit from Bungalows?
  • Bungalow Types: Meet the Bungaloft
  • Bungalow Types: Meet the Craftsman Bungalow

Ideally, this network of content will link to each other and create lots of opportunity for your customer to explore several in the series. Plus, you need more than one-wheel topic. If you have multiple clusters, you’ll have more success.

Video and Interactivity

Text content is still valuable, but anything you can do to make it more visual and engaging is a good idea. We’re not just talking about images, although those are important, but more specifically video, choice and personalization.

  • Video: Video is, by far, the most popular content type. According to Forbes, if you add a video to your landing page you can increase conversions by 80%. If you add videos to your email marketing, you can increase click-through rates by 200-300%. Most blogs, white papers and case studies can be made into videos, where they may get much more attention.
  • Choice: Infographics, interactive charts and many more content types ask your audience to make a choice. Infographics generally pose a question and have the audience answer it for themselves. Interactive charts or visuals allow your audience to play. Consider Column Five Media’s interactive graphic on the top sports franchises. Users can hover over any point in the graph to discover a team and their revenue, rank and more. You can even switch between leagues. This is a powerful way to engage customers and help them connect with your brand.
  • Personalization: These days, we have digital tools that help us deliver personalized content to individuals or segments of our audience. By delivering someone content that is focused on them, we can out compete with the huge amounts of content they are exposed to on a daily basis.

 

These are just some of the directions that content marketing will be going in the future. Now onto another question: where will content marketing take you?

If you want to get started with your own campaign, reach out to us at Creative Campbellville today.

Categories: Content
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