Digital marketing often relies on good content and a variety of strategies to garner results. But, with algorithms evolving and trends constantly changing, what consists of “good content” in 2022? 

Personalization is Best

Above all, remember that you’re creating content for humans. Yes, you want Google to crawl your site and be happy with the design and the keywords, but you want real humans to be happy as well.

Personalized content written for people is a marketing trend that will never go out of style. It can make your content stand out from the competition because readers get to know more about the brand and the people running it. In our fast-paced, digital world, human connection is priceless.

How can you create personalized content? Here are a few suggestions:

• Find and Use Your Voice
• Share Behind-the-Scenes
• Survey Your Audience
• Avoid Stock Images
• Highlight Customer Feedback

Hopefully humanized content is a marketing trend that never goes away. 

Incorporate Short-Form Videos

Have you noticed the uptick in short-form videos across social media platforms? Once a photo-sharing platform, reels now reign supreme on Instagram as it attempts to compete with TikTok. According to SemRush’s 2021 study on content marketing trends, 41% of respondents reported that short-form videos boosted the success of their overall content strategy.

What’s Considered a Short-Form Video?

Any video that’s less than one minute is a short-form video. According to HubSpot, videos between 31 and 60 seconds tend to perform the best. In fact, short video clips currently have the highest ROI and are the most commonly shared content on social media platforms.

Ideas for Sharing Short-Form Videos

• Product Tutorials 
• New Product Teaser
• Behind-the-Scenes
• Answer Frequently Asked Customer Questions
• Participate in Trending “Challenges” 
• Partner with Influencers (for ads, demos, challenges)

Remember that any short-form video content you create should always align with your brand. Your posts need to stay authentic to your brand’s voice no matter what’s trending. 

Once you’ve created the content, where should you share the short-form video? Here are the best platforms for publishing videos in 2022.

Where to Share Short-Form Videos

1. TikTok
2. Instagram (Reels)
3. YouTube Shorts
4. Triller
5. Hippo Video
6. Magisto by Vimeo
7. Lately.ai
8. Wistia

As with any content, experiment with which platform serves you best. Where are you going to reach your target demographic? If you’re not trying to sell to Millennials and Gen Z, TikTok may not be the best place for you.

Focus on Voice-to-Text Content

As of 2020, Amazon estimated that 24% of US homes had an Alexa device. That percentage has continued to grow, and Alexa isn’t the only digital assistant people are using. Siri and Google Assistant make it more convenient to verbally search for products and services than to type a query.

Is your content compatible with voice-to-text searches? What verbiage and keywords are you using that put your content up at the top of search engine results? We often focus on single or short tail keywords when creating content, but longtail keywords have more success for voice searches.

For example, a short tail keyword for back-to-school shopping might be “school supplies.” If a parent or student is using a digital assistant to shop, they might use a longtail phrase such as “Hey Siri, show me school supplies for elementary kids with next day delivery.” Peppering longtail keyword phrases in your content can make it more compatible with the conversational way people are searching for your product or service.

Rely on Content to Generate Revenue

Digital marketing company Gravitate One recently shared that content is king. Originally a concept made popular by Bill Gates in the mid-1990s, it still rings true today. Content marketing should be seen as a valued asset for generating revenue.

We can’t rely on the “if you build it, they will come” strategy in marketing. Sometimes we have to put forth the effort to draw people in and convert them to customers. But how do we do that? Content! 

More companies are devoting parts of their marketing budget to content creation and optimization.  Content strategies are including blog posts and newsletters to complement social media posts. After all, what happens if a social platform goes down for the day? Do you have a website with content that can keep your audience informed and engaged? More than just a backup, evergreen content hosted on a website can serve as the backbone of your brand.

Important advice to remember is that not all content has to be salesy. Some of it should be used to build a relationship with your audience and create loyalty. Gravitate has tips for creating successful content in their blog post HERE.

Improve Click-Through Rates (CTRs)

A trend in content marketing is to leverage existing content to increase your click-through rate. If you have a blog post that is doing well, SemRush suggests embedding a YouTube video in it to get more views. 

YOu can also improve your CTR by asking questions in your headers and the body of your content. Capitalize on what people are asking and prove yourself the authority on it. Better yet, make it a series of blog posts or videos that go in-depth to answer the question. Keep people coming back for more.

Audit Content

Content audits are becoming more common in the marketing industry, with nearly 75% of companies hosting one each year. 

What’s a Content Audit?

A content audit is an analysis of existing content, and how it’s performing. The audit looks at what’s been published to identify both strengths and weaknesses. Once everything is sorted, content can be further optimized to perform better.

Considerations in a Content Audit

• URL
• H1
• Meta Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• Content Format
• Content Purpose
• Customer Journey
• Main Focus Keywords
• Internal Links
• Outbound Links
• Content Metrics

Auditing content gives you the opportunity to update anything that’s no longer relevant and can increase both engagement and rankings. It’s a lot of work, but committing to at least an annual audit can increase your content’s potential to earn revenue.

If you don’t have a dedicated content marketing team in-house, it might be time to outsource some of the work so your brand gets the exposure it needs to thrive.