What kinds of content should I use in my marketing?

content trends, long-form content
Jan 17, 2019
Content Marketing

With technology changing around us at lightning pace and a new “next big thing” in marketing seemingly coming along every other day, it can be hard to know what kinds of content your business should be creating to promote your business and create a connection with your customers. 

Ultimately, you have to do what’s right for your consumers. You have to: 

To get that right for your specific business, you need to do a bit of research into your actual and potential customer base. But, in the meantime, it can’t hurt to know what the trends are! 

Let’s take a look at the content thousands of content marketing professionals around the world are focusing on in 2019.

What’s hot in content marketing in 2019?

The Content Marketing Institute’s annual Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report for B2C brands is an invaluable resource for finding out what other businesses are doing in content marketing.

If you’re not sure what you should be doing, the trends revealed in the report are great food for thought.

This year the CMI survey asked content marketers what kinds of content they are now creating more of, compared to last year. Here’s what CMI discovered:

content trends, content marketing

Video and audio content are much more popular now

The above chart shows us a huge growth in investment in video and audio content, including live streaming and webinars. Almost 70 per cent of those marketers surveyed said their brands were going to increase spending on this kind of content.

This is perhaps no surprise. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that people of content prefer these forms of content, which are quicker and easier to consume and are perfect for distribution on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

But written content hasn’t been forgotten here. Almost as many brands are spending more on editorial content like blog posts, article and ebooks this year. This is encouraging to see because we know Google loves high-quality written content (it’s great for your SEO) and we know consumers are asking for it, too!

What specific kinds of content should my business create?

The chart below, also from the CMI report, shows the kind of content that brands have started to use, focus on or experiment within the past year.content marketing trendsThis is by no means an exhaustive list. And these types of content won’t be right for every business. Films and apps might be beyond your budget, for example. But the above list is great to get an indication of what other brands have started to focus on. 

Long-form written content gets a nod in this list, which is perhaps no surprise as discerning consumers increasingly look for high-quality information. “Long-form” refers to in-depth written content, like articles longer than about 1,500 words (right up to maybe 10,000 or 15,000 words), books, guides, ebooks and even white papers. 

Short videos ideal for sharing on social media, including on “story” services like InstaStory, are also becoming more popular with brands, just as they’ve become more popular with social media users. Perhaps it’s time to experiment?

  

If you need in-depth editorial or short video services in Perth or Western Australia, get in touch with the team at Lush — The Content Agency.