How to Set Yourself Up for Content Marketing Success in 2015
How do you ensure your content marketing is ready for 2015?
The short answer: You look at changes in the industry's landscape to incorporate into your strategy, isolate your own excess efforts and eliminate any waste for the future.
There are several processes involved in content marketing—from content creation to distribution to measuring performance—and figuring out where best to direct your efforts and resources is the surest way to increase your success and see an improved ROI in 2015.
Trends to Watch
While some best practices don't stay "best" for long, nor do they work for everyone, it's never a bad idea to keep up with developing trends and new ideas.
Some trends worth mentioning include:
- Among content format types, infographics have seen the greatest surge in use from 51% in 2013 to 61% in 2014. With tools such as Piktochart, it's easier than ever to start leveraging this popular content type—with or without a designer on your team.
- Facebook is increasingly becoming pay-to-play with other social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn) likely to follow. The illusion of "owned" media cannot be relied on as much when it comes to distributing your content to the largest audience.
- SEO is becoming more about the meaningful context beyond the keywords you're targeting. With Google's growing emphasis on semantic search, targeting relevant keywords isn't enough; we need to learn to speak our customer's language.
Tactics to Try
Looking at what tactics have gained traction is one way to take educated risks that might reap high rewards for your business.
- In-person events, webinars, videos, and blogs are among the most effective B2B tactics in use.
- Advocate marketing is gaining in popularity. With 84% of decision makers entering the buyer cycle after being referred by someone they trust, customer advocates can offer the kind of referrals and social proof that translates well into new sales.
- "Relevant" content experiences are fast on their way to becoming "personalized" content experiences that make sense within the individual's own frame of experience and their own specific interests.
Tools to Use
As content marketers we have a wide range of tools at our disposal to help us condense the various processes involved in our day-to-day routines. Here are some tools to consider adopting or investing in for the new year:
- Content Discovery: BuzzSumo helps you get a feel for what topics are hot in your industry and lets you keep an eye on the competition too, making it a great tool to take the pain out of content discovery and research.
- Advocate marketing: Influitive helps you create advocates by gamifying your online marketing. Something to consider given the rising popularity of advocate marketing.
- Design: Canva is one of many free visual content creation tools that can help even non-designers brighten up their content with images and other visual assets.
Ready for the New Year?
In content marketing there are always new practices to adopt and bad habits to drop. December is a good time to reflect and go over some highlights from the past 11 months so we can resolve to have a better, stronger year.
Of course I've only covered the tip of the iceberg—a glance at some worthwhile points of discussion. If you've got any other trends, tips, and tools that deserve attention in the coming year, share them in the comments!