As a marketing professional, it is important to stay up-to-date with the trends. Keeping content marketing strategy current will help you reach the most amount of viewers and gain more engagement from current and prospective customers because technological advances can change and progress from day to day. Keeping these developments contemporary is also important because as technology changes, as it often does, so do the preferences of your audience.

We are here to help you understand the current trends for this year by touching on some of the most popular content marketing trends of 2019.

Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of videos, blogs, social media posts, etc that not necessarily or explicitly promote the brand or organization, but is intended to optimize interest in its services or products to the public.

An accurate description, according to the Content Marketing Institute, of content marketing’s purpose is “to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.”

Collaborating With Influencers

First and foremost, what is an influencer? An influencer is someone who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of their authority, awareness, position or relationship with their audience. These individuals usually have a large following on social media or other particular niches, and engage with their audience constantly. These could be celebrities, bloggers and other content creators. Brands are realizing how much ‘influence’ these people have on their followers and are starting to collaborate with them to promote their products or services.

Content marketing trends for 2019 in this category would be taking more risks when choosing who organizations partner with. There are “safe” options, those who have a good, not great, following and there are more controversial influencers, who often have the highest rates of engagement. The riskier choice would be the latter, however, they could potentially gain the most business through that collaboration.

Live Broadcasting

Of course the first thing you will think of is WSFA news broadcast every day at 6:00 p.m. or a live broadcast outside during a thunderstorm. While you’re not wrong to think this, what we are referring to is live broadcasting on social media. Recently, social media applications like Facebook and Instagram have incorporated a “live” feature.

The reason why “going live” is important for engagement with content marketing is because of a recent change in Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm. This change directs the order of the posts that Instagram users see when they are scrolling on their feed. Based on specific signals, it prioritizes posts, pushing the most applicable ones toward the top and giving them the most visibility while other content ends up being placed further down. This has been detrimental to businesses who engage and advertise constantly with their consumers through content that they put on social media.

The great thing about “going live” is that every single one of your followers will get a notification saying that they will be appearing on a live, interactive video. This creates an opportunity for content marketing visibility for followers even if your pain posts are being affected by the new algorithm.

Chatbots

Have you ever visited a website and saw the persistent popup on the bottom right corner that urges you to “chat with us!” That is a chatbot. They focus on learning about their customers, personalizing their experience, and developing a one-on-one relationship with the customer. They basically automate the task of talking with people over the internet.

Chatbots are intelligent and according to Chatbots Life, they can be a very powerful content marketing tool. Because of the great success chatbots have shown for certain brands, the continued use of them have led to an estimate of 28% increase in revenue for websites who use chatbots.

Chatbots are a great tool because they make the buyer’s experience more personal, as if they were shopping inside a physical store with assistance from employees, but in the comfort of their own home.

Researching and staying up-to-date on content marketing trends yearly is crucial for your business’s marketing strategy. It may even be better to research trends more often than yearly as the technology world is ever changing.

Inner Spark Creative can help you reach your content marketing goals by staying up-to-date so you don’t have to. We know how to implement the best trends for your specific business, services, and product type to amplify the amount of engagement with current and potential customers. To learn more about our services, visit our website or contact us at (334) 826-7502 for a free consultation.