The covid-19 pandemic has changed the way consumers discovered and consumed the content. This significantly transformed the existing content marketing practices at scale.
In 2021 itself, marketers experienced a sudden spike in their content marketing budget. The dollars pumped in content mediums such as videos, digital and real-world events, owned-media assets, and paid media increased to a considerable level post-covid era.
Content Marketing Trends 2022
The article covers a few important content marketing trends for 2022 that will require your attention, effort, and investment. As you finish reading this post, you will be able to optimize your content marketing efforts and capitalize on them for massive marketing success.
Need for Relevance and Quality
The year 2022 will be the year of content. Over the years, Google has brought in several updates to make sure content wins over any other strategy. Initiatives like Google’s core updates, Page Experience, and Core Web Vitals have ensured that content creators and marketers stick to quality content.
With E-A-T, Google pushed-in Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness as the core metrics to measure content quality. It will continue to encourage marketers to produce searchable content through 2022. Think beyond text while drafting the content for your next marketing campaign. Add elements of interest to instill exceptional content experiences.
Integrate audio, video, text, AR/VR, gamification, and other interactive elements to make the content more engaging and build more trust.
Understanding Consumer Intent
Content written after understanding the user intent makes more impact.
Unless you are sure about what’s the intent behind the use search, you can’t produce content that readers love.
The current SEO focuses more on keywords instead of analyzing the user intent behind search to truly connect with their audience. If you can distinguish what your readers are searching for, you can plan and publish content that speaks directly to them.
Use some premier tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to find topics, keywords, and other essential insights to develop content that meets each searcher’s intent.
Data-Driven Content Planning
Data-driven content will be the next big thing. Gone are the days when marketers considered only a few performance metrics and insights to create a content marketing plan. Now they have access to more digital touchpoints and insights to analyze and act upon.
An ideal content marketing strategy in 2022 will be based on three elements namely people, processes, and tools. It will collectively help marketers to evaluate the data and plan a strategy based on the insights available.
As the year is almost at exit, it’s time to revisit the strategy to track marketing bottlenecks and fix them asap. Determine if the process is incapable or tools being used are inefficient. Finding efficiencies in the early stages of project planning reduces wastage in terms of resources, capital, and workforce.
Keep In Mind Search and Google
Unless people know your content even exists, no one is going to read it. Write content that is search engine friendly. Quality content easily ranks in Google SERP. While writing the content, you make sure that the content is able to answer the user’s query in the best manner possible. The content should also follow Google’s guidelines for quality content.
Besides considering the main blue link search results appearing in the search, marketers should also focus on the new opportunities Google offers in form of Featured snippets, People Also Ask, video carousels, image results, Top Stories at the top of the search rankings. They play a significant role in making your website discoverable and more visible.
To get the most out of your content, optimize your content for making a mark in SERPs. You can also search optimized outdated or older content to make it unique, fresh, and irrelevant. Don’t forget to add schema markup to tell Google what this content is all about.
Importance of AR & VR
In 2022, AR(augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) will be the driving forces behind digital disruption. It will further speed up the process of innovations in content marketing. The use of these next-generation AI technologies will help marketers to produce innovative content formats that connect users more deeply with the story they tell.
With AR and VR, your readers not only read the content but also feel the text and emotionally connect with your brand. Next time when you produce a new content piece for your readers, find ways to augment elements of AI for better engagement.
Leading retailer Ikea has implemented a VR-powered system on its platform so that users can virtually test the product and ascertain if the product actually looks good when in the home.
Real-time Insights and Actionable Data
Real-time tracking of your content marketing campaigns helps you understand their performance, bottlenecks, and scope of improvements. Monitoring and tracking of insights present actionable data to act upon and make changes to improve your SEO efforts in sync with content production. This is especially important when website content and its structure are frequently changed by website administrators or content marketing teams.
Conclusion:
A lot has been changed in the dynamics of content marketing since the covid-19 outbreak happened. It drove a significant and visible change into the new content marketing trends consumer preferences around content. Now, content marketers have to produce awesome content to raise expectations and satisfy the user intent. Let’s welcome 2022 with a more innovative and ultimately successful marketing strategy.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.