It’s a time when 2016 has come to its final stage and a new year with new opportunities is knocking on our doors. How will the content marketing behave in 2017? We can say a lot about trends in content marketing for the year 2017 by analyzing the latest developments in the strategies to the end of 2016.
In 2016, content was an integral part of digital marketing campaigns and its popularity seemed to touch the sky. The latest updates by Google (Penguin 4.0, mobile first index) somewhere advocated the importance of content marketing in terms of search engine optimization. On the whole, content marketing was in boom from the starting to the end of 2016.
Next year is waiting for you with some new trends, but the popular content marketing strategies (that I am going to discuss below) are still the rulers.
Documentation of a content marketing strategy-
A report was published by CMI for content marketing in 2017. It says, only 37% of the B2B marketing professionals have actually documented their content marketing plan. However, the left 41% claim that they have the plan in their mind and they did not document it.
Documentation of a content marketing plan or strategy allows the marketers to have a contrasting insight of the target and the strategies to achieve that target. A mission without a clear target is good for nothing. If you cannot document your idea and mission, then trust me you are not sure about it and you have doubts that it will actually work or not. Without documentation it becomes easier to get distracted from the primary focus and relevant action seems to diverge in a void direction. So, take the same path as taken by the 37 % of those content marketers; it would be fruitful for your content marketing strategy even in 2017.
Quantity matters- you need to produce more contents-
Content are really time sensitive. A content trending by the end of 2106 today might not be a trend in 2017. There is a definite need of new and updated contents to keep up with the growing consumption of contents.
A research done by CMI suggest that 70 % of B2B marketer agree that content marketing in 2017 requires producing, even more, contents than in 2016.
Quantity of contents mattered by the end of 2016, but it does not mean that the quality of contents would be overlooked by the quantity. It’s wise to produce more contents, but an alignment with content relevancy to your B2B goal and ROI would bring more business.
Influencer or endorsed marketing-
Influencer marketing was the biggest trend in 2016. It did not only include the textual contents, but the major role was played by the video contents published by the famous faces. By the end of 2016, the influencer marketing is now not limited to the public figures, film stars, sports stars, or singers. The concept of celebrity has shifted and extended its reach to the internet stars like Vloggers and tech YouTube channels.
The new generation of influencers from internet backgrounds has gained a huge popularity in a very short span of time. Tech channels and review channels have shown a record influence on customer buying behavior and this trend can be seen to expand its reach even in 2017.
Narrowing the target population- Personalisation and effectiveness-
The effectiveness of the content deployed matters a lot. The relevancy of content for a specific section of readers ensures the effectiveness of the content in that particular section. As mentioned in the former part of this article, quality of content is also important with the quantity of content. So, creating a content for the broader section is not more a desirable trend now.
Marketers are concentrating their area of interest in the most relevant section of the population, targeted to a particular group. Thus narrowing the target population to increase the effectiveness of the content marketing campaign. This trend is still in evolution and is not expected to become outdated any sooner.
There were the most popular content marketing strategies that are popular by the end of 2016, and they seem to take on their legacy even to the year 2017. In all the cases, content marketing in 2017 will be a much-enhanced activity with some other growing trends like VR, AR, and AI based contents. Hopefully, these three trends have already started to show their effectiveness and they will grow exponential with the advancement in technology.
