Top 4 Content Marketing Trends Ruling The Year 2019

Content marketing is the most popular form of marketing followed by businesses across various industries. We can say that an entire business runs on only one thing – CONTENT. Though it is important to add here that the ways of spreading this content across various customers are also indispensable to thrive a business; we can say that content plays a chief role. Starting from product brochures, information booklets, newsletters to big advertisements on hoardings, a business needs content to convey information about its offerings to the prospective customers. Just producing content is not important, it is essential to market it to make a business thrive and expand. With the advent of the internet, businesses are increasingly shifting to the online platform and disseminating the content they generate through various methods.

Every year there are set trends which help your content get maximum reach. Studying the rapidly changing trends, I have arrived at the following content marketing trends which you must follow to stay aggressively competitive in your industry.

1. Lengthy Content:

Gone are the days when 500-word content was more than sufficient for a web page. Although it’s certain that visitors don’t go through ALL the content on your blog, it is still important for your blog post to have at least 2000 words to get maximum hits. The reason? Google’s last update focuses chiefly giving importance to meaningful content rather than the content just stuffed with keywords. Keywords will still be important but will not be the only deciding factor in ranking a page. To gain maximum reach, content marketers will have to place keywords meaningfully across the content so that visitors can reach it through the queries they enter in the search text box.

According to a study, pages with lengthy content were ranked the highest on Google’s search engine results page.

So, if you want your pages to perform well or your blog posts to have a wider reach, then ensure that you keep this content marketing trend in consideration.

2. Messaging Apps:

Currently, sales representatives are constantly communicating with customers through messaging apps for personalized interactions and quick resolution of queries. This year we will see that even content marketers will be seen reaching the customer base through these messaging apps. Messaging apps such as Imo, Whatsapp, etc. will be increasingly utilized to distribute content. More and more people are spending time on these apps and due to which these businesses are focusing on distributing their content through the messaging channel. This way it will be possible for businesses to reach right on the fingertip of the customer. Content Marketers will also have to generate succinct yet creative and intelligent posts to reach customers through messaging apps and leave an impact. Over time, these messages can be automated to be sent on specific days of the year.

Messaging wins over emailing as it has more views and responses compared to emails. Businesses can expect higher engagement and interaction levels with text messages. According to a study by a single point, texts have 99% response rate.

We can conclude from the above image that the messages reach almost 95% of the viewers just within three minutes. Creating interactive two-way messages or even push notifications can ensure that your messages are actually viewed by customers.

3. Video Marketing:

This hot favourite method has increasingly gained popularity off-late. The reason for this is reducing attention spans. A number of forms of videos can be created to capture and engage the attention of the audience. In this age of stressful and busy lifestyles, people hardly have the time and patience; they feel that reading is a drudgery which they want to avoid at all costs. This is why videos have increasingly been gaining importance. They present information in an engaging way which appeals to the users. If apt background music is used in the video, it evokes the right emotions in the minds of the viewers and leads to more number of conversions. Video marketing will continue to be a favourite method of marketing content.

Following are the forms of videos businesses create and share through various channels to attract more customers.

1. Product demonstrations
2. How-To Guides
3. Presentations
4. Video blogs (vlogs)
5. Tutorials
6. White Board Animations
7. Q & A videos
8. Webinars
9. Funny commercials
10. Customer testimonials
11. Interviews
12. Live streams

4. Content Clusters:

One of chief methods of content marketing which is gaining prominence is content clusters. It is a great way for a website to establish its authority over a specific set of topics. It is a technique under which a cluster of content is created around a single topic. Each topic links back to the main topic. Picking up the right topics to create cluster content is very crucial to gain the expected results from this content marketing strategy.

The main aim of creating cluster content is to spread information about your products or services by writing content related to them. Secondly, writing content clusters helps you establish your authority over those specific topics as viewers can find all the information right at one place.

With the change in Google’s search algorithm, content clusters have gained more popularity. With Google giving importance to meaningful content rather than just keyword stuffed content, websites have to emphasize more on generating meaningful and well-knit content. Content clusters make it possible to cover a topic in-depth and they also make it possible to explore various topics surrounding a single topic. This is why content clusters will be gaining importance in the year 2019.

Keeping these trends in mind while launching content marketing campaigns can help you use it in a smart way. Content marketing will continue to evolve with changing Google algorithms, user experiences, evolving technologies, improving lifestyles, and many other factors. The challenge for businesses will be to follow these trends closely and implement them in the right way at the right time to achieve improved outcomes. What content marketing strategy do you think will continue to be in vogue during the year 2019? Please share your experiences in the comment section below.