You wouldn’t trust a plumber to repair your flat tire, would you? What about your dentist – you wouldn’t ask him for advice for repairing your oven, right? We live in a world full of experts who pursued a specific profession for a reason. When it comes to marketing, the masters of content are the strategists, project managers, SEOs and creators.
In this week’s Content Marketing Weekly, we’ll take a look at what magic the marketing pros are creating (and recommending) with content this year.
10 Marketers Share Their Top Predictions for Marketing in 2019
Utilizing AI and collaborating with consumers to create content are two trends to expect this year. More importantly, there will be more focus on customers: Understanding your audience, enhancing the customer experience and focusing on trust and transparency will guide a successful strategy in 2019.
“The only long-term way to stay competitive in marketing is to continue to deepen your understanding of your audience and customers,” Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners shared. “There is a wide range of tactics available to do this including qualitative user research, surveys, web user session recording, split testing, and analytics.”
Get to know your audience so you can build a strong, trusting relationship to create and personalize great content.
Read the ClickZ article here.
5 European Brands Doing Magic with Content Marketing
With so many businesses committing to a digital strategy, how can you set yourself apart from the competition? You might want to try something that your audience wouldn’t expect, just like Schweppes did.
The Swiss beverage brand stepped outside its comfort zone and created the digital culture and lifestyle magazine “Villa Schweppes.” It covers everything from what’s trending in fashion to upcoming music festivals. It heads back into its wheelhouse by offering mixologist insight into cocktail recipes. Smart Insights called storytelling the future of content marketing, and Schweppes is showing us this holds true.
Building a community around your brand is another tip to take from the plastic building-block gurus at Lego. It created a box office movie, various videos games and even invested in community digital platforms and a magazine. The trend in storytelling through branded media is something to consider in the new year.
Check out the Entrepreneur article here.
11 Trends That Will Shape Marketing In 2019
Sure, the transformation of technology has completely changed content marketing over the last decade. AI is sure to make an impact over the next few years as well. But that doesn’t mean your audience wants you to stop creating content from a human perspective that’s both relatable and personable. Hamid Ghanadan, founder of The Linus Group, emphasized creating more meaningful relationships with your audience this year.
“We are fortunate to live in an age of advancing technology, but we run a risk of oversaturating our market with off-the-shelf tools that gather faceless data and create ineffective content,” he told Forbes. “Marketing has a remarkable power to inspire audiences. Instead of an influx of new tech to adopt, I predict we’ll embrace a deeper understanding of human behavior that will foster more meaningful relationships.”
Speaking of leveraging the personality of your content creators, micro influencers may be a better investment from an influencer marketing standpoint.
“As influencer-tracking technologies continue to improve, brands are becoming better equipped at fielding and managing large networks of high-engagement, low-following micro influencers for their campaigns,” Jordan Edelson of Appetizer Mobile LLC shared with Forbes. “This largely untapped market will soon allow for more brands to avoid the significant costs of mid- to high-level influencers and invest in more down-to-earth and relatable influencer marketing.”
Catch up on the Forbes article here.
17 Top Content Marketing Experts You Should Be Following
With so many trends popping up in social and content marketing these days, how can you keep up? By doing research and listening to what the experts are telling you, that’s how.
Digital marketing professionals are always talking about what’s happening in the industry, from general content and social to what’s going on with their own businesses. If you want to keep your strategy fun, fresh and effective, you need to pay attention to the success of those who do this for a living.
Digital strategist Shane Barker of Shane Barker Consulting, for example, specializes in digital reputation management, social media and influencer marketing. He writes about these topics in his own blog and collaborates with other popular brands like SEMrush and Bitly to share insight on content creation. He’s even supplied Brafton.com with a couple guest blogs.
Other experts and influencers to pay attention to include Brittany Berger, Lilach Bullock, Barry Feldman and Louis Grenier.
Read the rest of the Search Engine Journal article here.
The takeaway: Trust the experts *ahem* who have been around for a while and made a significant imprint in the content marketing world.
