What Content Marketing Changes Can We Expect in 2019?

The marketing realm is always evolving, but one of its most relevant constants tends to bring the most innovation to the table, and that’s precisely your content strategy.

It’s no longer enough to merely keep up with content trends proposed by experts, but listen to the very specific needs of your customers and tailor your approach accordingly. In fact, 2019 will be one of the most “personal” years when it comes to crafting the right content, as customers already dictate key changes we will see in the upcoming months.

Let’s go over several of the most notable content changes to implement ahead of time to greet 2019 with a strategy to dazzle your customers and earn you more loyalty than ever.

Go social or go home

There’s nothing new to the idea of businesses joining social networks to ensure their customers can reach them, stay in the loop with the latest company news, and even more so, engage on a personal level. However, 2019 will see some serious growth in these platforms and their usage, as more generations join their ranks and older ones get educated on their importance.

Facebook still reigns supreme as the frontier of user engagement, but other platforms show equally impressive potential to grow in 2019. For example, LinkedIn now has close to 600 million members, among them approximately 40 million decision-makers, so we can safely assume that this network will be one of the best B2B options to utilize in the following year.

Monitoring content ROI

With new content trends popping up at the speed of light, every business needs to understand how well their content is working to their advantage and if it delivers the desired results. It’s not enough to outline the purpose of your content pieces (to educate, inform, entertain), but you need to focus on specific goals your content strategy should aim for (retention rate increase, better click-through rates, lowering the bounce rate, and the like). Such high stakes often call for companies to outsource at least a portion of their content efforts in order to meet these goals successfully.

To that end, according to this SEO agency from Hong Kong, performance tracking and determining the right content KPIs is vital in order to build a strong collaboration with your chosen content experts. That way, you know where your investments are needed the most, and where you need to make changes to deliver on those content goals.

Video formats front and center

The number that has reshaped every single content strategy is bound to reshape yours as well: by 2021, over 80% of online traffic will be in video format, making it the most desirable way to convey a message regarding your brand to your target audience. Videos have the ability to deliver several layers of information through visuals, sound, and written content, thus making it far more appealing to the modern consumer.

Not to take a slice of such a sizable content pie would be the ultimate self-destructive move for any modern business. Make sure to find a way and incorporate video into your content strategy, from webinars to live streams, in order to humanize your brand further and engage with your customers on a new level.

Time to refine your strategy

All trends and market tendencies aside, there’s a reason certain marketing tactics are considered the pillars of success, and one of them is your approach to strategizing. To paint a more vivid picture, CoSchedule’s research shows that marketers who have a clear content strategy planned out are 538% more likely to be successful than their looser counterparts.

From start to finish, creating an actionable, step-by-step plan which is based on research will help you follow through your most relevant goals, keep up with those KPIs and understand what your audience needs. With so much fresh competition around every corner, it pays to know your path in order to ensure your marketing success, and your content game plays a vital role in your strategy.

Optimize for voice search

Another customer-driven trend that will change the landscape of SEO and content alike is our ability to do online searches with our voices. Technology has advanced so much that we now rely on AI to search for information (and hopefully come across your wonderful content), especially if we’re multitasking. Those among you who cook and get lost in a recipe wrist-deep in fresh brownie batter know the value of using your voice to find where you can buy coconut sugar in your neighborhood.

As technology develops even further, it will matter even more to make your content “voice-visible”, if you will. Additionally, audio content will see growth in 2019, so optimizing your most vital keywords to be voice-search friendly should be a top priority.

Conclusion

The life of content marketers is about to get even busier in 2019, as more different formats rise to the top, and more trends keep transforming the market. It’s essential that you stay in the know as to what your audience preferences are and how you can weave them and these latest trends into delivering the best possible content your brand needs to outgrow your competitors.