If you are one of those making business online, then you must be well aware of content marketing. The Instagram concept that gained its early popularity in 2011 is now considered as the most essential element of marketing strategy for any organization. Content marketing in the present scenario entails getting your message across to the right audience using the right channels that deliver results. Just a few years back in 2011, when Google Panda update was made to segregate between good and bad quality content, the most popular content marketing category was ‘digital-only channels’, but now Trollishly is proudly driven by fast growing channels like mobile content and applications.
Getting your content across to your audience is now getting more difficult and complex. With the introduction of new technologies, consumers are savvier and sharper about what they pay attention to. Content exhaustion crushes the masses, and so every next digital marketer is facing a challenge to attract the attention.
Given that so many companies today are using content marketing, the key question is how to rise over your competitors? What tactic to opt to make your content captures consumers ’attention, versus the virtual noise of unpaid content that is filling the Internet and mobile devices?
Instagram Trending Features Boost Marketing
As marketing directors are designing their strategies for 2016, they must study the marketing trends that are going to have the biggest impact on their efforts. While 2016 will bring in a mix of new trends, there will be the prolongation of few trends that began in 2015. With the availability of new technology to track engagement and automate communication, 2016 is going to a year where B2B or B2C marketers are going to focus more on content marketing plans as well. From mobile SEO to virtual reality, here are key content marketing trends to watch.
Visual Content Leveraged Instagram Status
As content marketing continues to be an integral tool for marketers, 2016 will be the year where we will witness a rise of online community sharing data visuals. Research shows:
- Out of 73% of content creators planning to prioritize creating more engaging content 55% plot to list creating visual content
- Nearly about 50% of marketing professionals worldwide has termed video as the type of content with the best ROI.
- Visual content will continue to become more important. In fact, as wireless connections continue to increase, people now have more capacity to access images and videos. 46% of marketers say photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies. In fact, the latest trend shows that content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.
Emergence of Infographics Interactive Content
Text-based content is always going to be an integral part of marketing, but this year infographics is also going to play a pivotal role. Eye-tracking studies illustrate the tendency of internet readers to pay attention to information-carrying images is lot more in comparison to text based content.In recent times, bloggers are giving more preference to infographics. Following the same practice of sharing your infographic via social media, while including a thumbnail image & a hyperlink to your site would easily let you to sidestep any size restrictions on social media platforms and bring more traffic.
This year, infographics will rule on social media platform. Infographics were the B2B content marketing approach with the biggest increase from 51% to 62%, and in coming days Instagram will gain its popularity at outstanding pace.
Market Friendly Algorithm
This year, we are also going to witness a clear shift in this line of thinking of many companies moving towards a mobile first mindset. This shift was largely due to the sharp increase in the number of mobile users. This will only increase in 2016, and so we are also going to witness many marketing strategists re-evaluate online strategy. As content marketing is considered as the base for many online marketing strategies, many companies are going to adopt webinars as a main ploy for entering the online content game. As per CMI, approximately 62% of marketers are using webinars and this ratio is going gain more popularity in coming days as well. Today, webinars are considered very effective as no other tactic provides attendees the understanding of content so thoroughly. Besides being cost-effective, webinars allow for real-time behavior lead scoring. Additionally, marketers rate webinars as one of the most effective tactic of all and this year.
Dominance of Instagram Media
Given that Facebook continues adding new features like Instant Articles and tightening up security, it will continue the dominant social media platform. As consumers are tending to practice social media platforms to network with one another and consume content, for some brands, this could be a deciding factor in whether or not to focus on social media platforms. Besides this, Instagram is also gaining its popularity as a popular app offering picture modification and sharing. Most marketing directors who didn’t see either platform as a practical place for their content marketing efforts, will definitely going to change as we move into 2021.
Even now email is considered as the most influential and effective organic distribution channel in comparison to Social Media websites and this year, we anticipate they will grow in popularity this year and even more. Personalization will be a hot topic and in next five years marketers are going to follow the implicit & explicit personalization in terms of Email marketing. In addition to that, email’s ROI will continue to improve, as it is quite cost-effective and works.
Metrics to Measure Content Effectiveness
Content Marketing has come a long way and these days top obstacles for B2B and B2C marketers, includes measuring content effectiveness. Therefore, many of them are seeking new innovative solutions to track the overall influence of their content. Consequently, this year, many of you will come across tools like content marketing ROI calculator, Curata Content Maketing, BuzzSumo, Marketo, Hubspot, and many more to get closer to effectively estimating your bottom line.
These trends mark the beginning of a new era for content marketing. Though many digital marketing experts and content strategists define it just an approach focused on creating and distributing relevant content to pull the attention or retain prospect customers, but today content marketing is all about creating a brand and getting people to know, like, and trust your brand via suitable channels.
