8 Trends That Will Shape Content Marketing in 2017

OK, first off, here is the irony; what follows is stolen. Yep, I didn't write a word of it. Say What?! An article about content marketing and you stole it? Well...Yes. I could try to spin this and call it "curating" (which is an excellent method for creating content quickly, by the way), but that would be dishonest, since the only piece of editorial I'm including here is this, and I used the entire article.

The one thing I really hate about Forbes layout is for an article like the one below, I had to click "Next Page" three different times. I'm sure it's working for them and they have their reasons, but it's annoying. No scrolling here.

However, I didn't copy over any of the images that accompany the article, so if you want to see them, you'll have to head over to Forbes site and see them there. Anyway...On to the article...

It’s that time of year again. In between the holiday parties and the shopping, we’re all trying to find some space to think about next year.

Many of you have already been considering this for awhile, of course. Some of you had 2017 all planned out in August. You submitted your 2017 marketing budget in September. You’ve probably already got most of your taxes done.

The rest of us… may not be that far along.

If you haven’t planned out every marketing task for 2017, I encourage you to consider these trends. And even if you have filled out your editorial calendars, take a look. Content marketing is evolving fast (it’s digital – fast is a given). We need to be building not just for next year, but for 2018 and beyond.

    1. We’re getting better at content marketing.

Good news first: 62% of B2B content marketers are “much more” or “somewhat more” successful with their content marketing than they were last year. 63% of B2Cers say the same. That’s a shift from the year prior, where a mere 30% of marketers were saying their content marketing was effective.

Clearly, this is a good thing. But it’s got some consequences you should be prepared for. As content marketing gets more successful, it’s going to get more budget dollars and bigger staffs. It’ll become more competitive with other types of marketing. So don’t be surprised if there’s a little rivalry among marketing teams as your firm recalibrates how to promote itself.

    2. Mobile

I’m gonna sound like a broken record here, but it can’t be said enough: There’s more traffic on the internet from mobile devices than from desktops. There are more people accessing your content on mobile devices than on desktops.

Have you looked at your content from a phone or tablet lately? Have you tried to download a whitepaper, ask for a sales rep to call you, or even read a post on your blog? If you found yourself squinting or clenching your jaw while you did it, there’s a problem.

Actually, it might be smart to run a full-fledged audit of how well your company communicates with mobile users. Extra credit if you access how well your competitors do it, too.

You know where this mobile thing is headed, right? Apps. Got an app yet?

    3. Facebook

“Facebook is eating the internet.” You’ve heard that, right? Well, I’m still on the fence about that, but I do know one thing for sure: Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of content consumption, content sharing, and content discovery.

In our own WASP 2016 State of Small Business Report, we found that Facebook is still the most-used social media platform for small businesses, though it’s use has declined a bit in the last year.

Not everybody’s thrilled about Facebook’s dominance. Publishers (including brand publishers) have embraced Facebook’s Instant Articles with mixed results. Then there’s the ever-declining organic reach problem. And the reality that it’s increasingly a “pay to play” platform.

But like it or not, ignore Facebook at your peril. Even if you’re in B2B.

    4. Visual content

Visual content has become so fundamental to the web that we’ve got entire social platforms who’s lingua franca is images. Like Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest.

If it just so happens that you haven’t embraced using images in your marketing (and are using them extensively), it’s time.

How to start? Hire a great photographer to take a couple hundred shots of your company, products and customers (stock photos won’t cut it). Then get yourself a Canva or Stencil account. And if you or your team have no design skills whatsoever? Check out Design Pickle, Brand Strong or UnDullify.

    5. Video content

On to moving pictures here. Like images, video is so core to the internet experience that entire platforms have evolved from the format. YouTube. Snapchat. (RIP, Vine). Facebook Live and Twitter’s video options are their attempts to try to keep up. Zuckerburg himself has said, “I think video is a megatrend, almost as big as mobile.”


    6. User-generated content

Here’s a stat to glue to your bathroom mirror: 85% of people trust content made by others more than they trust brands' content.

Trust is kinda the secret sauce of content marketing. In a sense, it’s why we do content marketing at all – to build trust. And so if user generated content is so much more effective at building trust than our own content marketing efforts are… well, then it’s time to shift tactics.

User-generated content (“UGC” as the cool kids say it) comes in the form of social shares, reviews, comments, and even YouTube videos. It might seem like a completely new thing, but it’s really not. It’s just influencer marketing, minus the large audiences and authority influencers have.

Suddenly, every customer you’ve got is a micro-influencer. Ta-da!


    7. Promotion matters

It took awhile, but many content marketers are finally looking up from behind their editorial calendars. They’ve made promoting their content a priority. They’re setting up systems to either reformat existing content, republish it, or both.

In other words, we’re all catching up to doing content marketing, as opposed to just content creation. It’s a good thing… and probably contributes to why we’re more successful.

Another effect of this? Paid promotion. Aka – advertising. It’s a little weird to think how we started content marketing because advertising wasn’t working, and now we’re back to using advertising to promote our content, because just publishing content wasn’t working.

But weird or not, it’s working (for now). Most successful content marketers pay to promote their content.


    8. Personalization

As content marketing becomes more successful, it’s also going to become more competitive. Or rather, even more competitive. “Content shock” has already caused us to create vastly more content than our audiences can consume. But that was just stage one competition.

Now, we’re looking for a new edge. Personalization is probably it.

This means way more than just sprinkling peoples’ first names in here and there. I’m talking about personalized content recommendations, apps that offer a “choose your own adventure” style experience for buyers, and more. Consumers know we’ve got their info – increasingly, they expect us to use it to their benefit.

Conclusion

Maybe I’ve been thinking about this too hard, but in a sense, all these trends are secondary. Everything in content marketing gets shaped by two things: Technology and our audiences.

If I had to pick one thing to focus on, it would be the audience.

It’s all about the audience. It’s always been about the audience. From what content formats they prefer, to where they hang out online, to how much (or little) they trust our marketing. The technology around content marketing – the platforms, the formats, the strategies – exist solely to engage our audiences.

8 Trends That Will Shape Content Marketing in 2017 first appeared on https://www.forbes.com