It doesn’t matter what industry you’re trying to win – content marketing has to be part of your marketing strategy. As we’ve watched the evolution of content marketing and how important it is for search engine optimization, brand awareness, and more, there are trends that have emerged in recent years that should be part of your content marketing strategy.
Content marketing encompasses many forms of media, so keep in mind that your company needs to embrace change, invest in the tools and equipment that will help you create great content, and, perhaps most importantly, is measured, and is optimized frequently. Consider incorporating the following content marketing tactics into your 2022 marketing strategy.
Create Valuable Long-Form Content
We’ll start with the least fun, but possibly the most valuable type of content for your business. Long-form content is the cornerstone of your content marketing strategy and is worth the time, cost, and effort involved with creating it – or having it created for you. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving to provide users with relevant answers to their searches.
That means that your long-form content needs to be well-researched, high-quality, and thoughtfully peppered with relevant keywords. Blog posts that are 750-1000 words perform best on Google and other search engines, so take the time to thoughtfully create posts that solve the pain points your ideal clients face. Avoid being overly promotional, and break up the content so it’s easy to consume, and to read on mobile.
Note: Millennials and Gen Z almost exclusively consume media on mobile, so make sure your website, and all your content, are optimized for mobile.
Invest in Great Video Content
Speaking of those Millennials and Gen Z folks, they would much rather watch a video about a topic than read a blog post. Video is one of the most effective and popular forms of content marketing and has been for a few years now. But you can’t just record videos on your phone and post them to social media and your website.
Users want engaging, high-quality content that delivers value, and entertains. Video creates a connection with the viewer. The Internet of Voice and Natural Language Processing trends allow computers to analyze audio content, making videos work for you in an SEO performance capacity.
Plan for a mix of short-form and longer-form video content, and consider interactive videos that include a call-to-action that can capture more leads and make your video more valuable to your organization.
Organize Your Content To Enable Hyper-Personalization
Everyone likes to feel like they matter, so content personalized to them tends to increase engagement. Younger generations won’t even interact with content unless it’s personalized to them, and that’s why content from, for example, Amazon and Netflix sees so much success. When you receive emails with blog posts or videos that offer suggestions based on your previous behavior, you tend to click on through.
Personalization doesn’t mean that you populate a subject line with a person’s name, it means that you pay attention to the content a user likes the most, and give them more of what they like. Organizationally, you need to understand your buyer personas, create content for each persona, and then market to your audience based on the content they’ll like. AI technology can help you with this.
Virtual Events
Virtual events like webinars and virtual summits are powerful lead magnets. When you can offer value to your customers and potential customers in a live webinar or live streaming event that they have to register for, you engage them in a way only a live event can beat. Provide the opportunity for Q&A, so that live attendees feel like they are part of a larger conversation, and concentrate on solving pain points, rather than delivering a sales pitch.
After the live event is over, you have an opportunity to use some of the content marketing strategies outlined above. You can write a long-form blog post covering the key points covered in the live virtual event. You can create short-form video snippets to use on social media, and you can touch registrants again by emailing out a video replay and driving people back to your website.
These are just a few tactics that should be part of your 2022 content marketing strategy. Of course, there are more – interactive content like polls and questions on social (we didn’t even cover social media – we’ll save that for a different post), voice marketing, chatbots, existing content optimization, infographics, and more.
Developing a solid content marketing strategy takes a lot of time, research, and thought. We can help! Contact us today to develop a content marketing strategy that will set you apart in your industry.
