Tag Archives: Content Marketing Trends

5 content marketing trends in 2018, according to Salesforce

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5-content-marketing-trends-in-2018-according-to-salesforceAlthough the fundamentals of content marketing are unchanging, the trends keep changing every year. This is because new content sharing platforms keep popping up and the line between various formats (text, video, image) is constantly being blurred.

I will have my own take on this sometime in the future, but this Salesforce blog (accompanied by a podcast) throws some light on the 5 content marketing trends in 2018.

Summarily, the 5 content marketing trends in 2018 (according to the Salesforce post) are:

  1. The job profiles of content marketing teams are changing: With content marketing (on the web) blossoming into a complete realm in itself and being recognized as one of the most vital marketing tools, it no longer means writing blog posts and articles and hoping to generate traffic from them. It’s a complete discipline. You need to have an expertise. You need to have a knack for creating killer content and then statistically distributing that content.
  2. Adaptable, contextual content: In the coming years content will no longer be simple blog posts and Facebook and LinkedIn updates. Devices will be interacting with each other without human interaction and lots of content would be changed between them. Quality AI-powered voice-interfaces are making an impact on how content is ranked and used by search engines like Google. More content is written the way people speak. More content is written in the form of answering questions rather than ongoing monologues. Contextually, content will need to learn to exist independently so that the central communication is not failed even when a small chunk of content is picked by a random device.
  3. Transparency and credibility is going to matter more: There is lots of content on the Internet. Whom do you trust? If a particular company is making some claims through its content, since everybody is producing content, it is very difficult to believe who is telling the truth. So, complete transparency will be demanded – from whom the content is coming, who is publishing it and from where the data is being picked.
  4. Content is going to be the fundamental building block for all types of marketing: There are many companies that are already building their entire marketing strategy on the foundation of their content. Coca-Cola for example. Their official website is called Journey, which is nothing but pure content. When companies and organizations start using stories to promote their products and services instead of advertisements, content is obviously going to be at the center of all promotional activity.
  5. There is going to be little difference between paid, owned and earned media: First, here is a blog post on the Differences between Owned, Earned and Paid content marketing channels. What this means is, these days your content can exist on multiple platforms. In traditional sense, owned content is whatever content you publish under your own blog or domain name. But then what about content that you publish on Facebook or Medium? People are also publishing blog posts on LinkedIn? Although the content is published by you, it belongs to a different medium.

It’s always good to know about the emerging trend in your field, in this case, content marketing, so that instead of following, you lead at the front.

Trends change from year to year but what remains the same is the quality of content that you produce and distribute.

So do you think content marketing is easy?

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Just like any other marketing, content marketing has its own share of hardships that you have to go through in order to achieve results. Just because most of the content marketing happens on the Internet and just because it’s easier to do things on the Internet compared to the brick-and-mortar world, many people develop this false notion that content marketing should be easy or at least, if not easy, then dirt cheap. Both are misconceptions.

The author of this blog post rightly complains, “Hey, nobody told me content marketing was going to be hard!”

In the blog post the author quotes Joe Polizzi, the founder of Content Marketing Institute who says that in terms of content marketing, we may be entering the “age of disillusionment”.

Surveys show marketers are skeptical about the effectiveness of their content efforts. Many people are trying content marketing with high hopes, but they’re not seeing the engagement they expected. Professionals are confusing short-term campaign-based marketing with long-term content marketing endeavors and they’re not looking for the right kind of ROI as a result. Many are told by agencies that “going bigger” is the solution, but it often isn’t (even if they COULD justify more spend). There are great successes… But there are disappointments, too.

This is something that I have repeatedly written on my blog too, that most of content marketing efforts fail because people have no idea exactly what they are trying to achieve. In most of the cases, they confuse content marketing with relentlessly publishing blog posts and articles trying to cover the keywords to improve their search engine rankings. Whereas there is nothing wrong in trying to improve your search engine rankings, this shouldn’t be the sole objective of content marketing.

The blog post further quotes

The most common mistake is also the most mistake easiest to correct — failing to establish a foundation, or starting point. You can’t just jump in and start producing content and expect to be effective. You have to have well-documented buy cycles, buyer profiles (personas), a library of existing content and an understanding of the tools/technologies you’ll need to effectively measure your programs. And most of all you need alignment from all key internal stake holders.

When it comes to content marketing most businesses apply the “jump first and worry about how deep the pool is later” attitude. You need to have both short-term and long-term plans. You need to figure out your content marketing metrics. You need to know what you exactly aim to do.

Why 86% of B2B marketers use content marketing?

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In an annual study by the Content Marketing Institute titled “2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” 86% B2B marketers are using content marketing to promote their businesses. The online survey was conducted on 1800 North American B2B marketers, as explained in this Ad Age blog post. Although in this previous blog post of mine you must have read that 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing one way or another. The differences of percentages doesn’t really matter, what matters is, why it is important for this segment of the market to rely on content rather than conventional advertising models. The explanation depends on from where you look at it.

I write content for a living but without hesitation I can say content marketing no longer means creating informative articles and blog posts, although a major chunk of content is written. Content these days can exist in multiple formats including video, audio and graphic, aside from textual. People are consuming content all the time in one form or another. Take for instance social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. All the time people are posting new updates. They are posting images, videos, sounds and of course text updates. This is content. Without this content these social networking websites have no reason to exist.

Content like this has turned into a medium. Even the search results on Google are examples of content, although it is curated content rather than generated content. But it is content. Since people are constantly consuming this content, rather than existing as a random entity, it has turned into a medium and whenever there is a medium, businesses find out a way to use it for advertising, marketing and promotion. But that’s not the point, the point of this blog post is, why more and more B2B marketers prefer content marketing over conventional marketing?

Is content easier to create and promote? Once it used to be easier to create and promote content but with millions of blog posts and articles being churned out on a weekly basis, this no longer remains the case. It’s not that suddenly there is lots of good content; simply, there is lots of content and it becomes difficult for people to reach what may be useful to them. Nonetheless, whether one likes it or not, without content you don’t exist on the Internet. This is one reason why B2B marketers cannot help using content for marketing.

Another reason is, B2B transactions involve higher stakes in terms of monetary transactions and effort required compared to B2C. Is it easier for you to purchase a single mobile phone from an online retailer or purchase 2000 mobile phones from a manufacturer for your own retail store? Before purchasing those 2000 mobile phones you will need to research and for this research you’re going to have to go through lots of content not just on the manufacturer’s website but also other places. Obviously the manufacturer needs to convince you that there is a market for his product and how your bottom line can be improved by selling the phone from your own retail store.

My content writing services can also be termed as B2B because it’s mostly business owners who approach me to get content written for their websites so that they can make more sales. Although they may not be spending thousands of dollars for my services, my services are critical for their business. So they need to do some research. They carefully need to read through various sections on my website to make sure that they are hiring the right content writer for their business. It’s not just the cost but also the future of the business that depends on a B2B transaction and that is why more and more B2B marketers are using content to strengthen their brand and expand their presence on the Internet.