Content marketing strategy is constantly changing. While it can be tempting to try every new trend at once, it ends up making it difficult to determine what is actually working.

While we don’t have a crystal ball, here are four trends that we are noticing that would be worthwhile to start weaving into your content marketing strategy sooner rather than later.

The Rise of Citizen Content Creators

As technology gets better, everyday people have been able to unlock design and content passions. With a plethora of apps that make it easy to edit photos, videos, and even create email newsletters and viral templates for social media, design tools are available to everyone.

Embracing these citizen creators will help diversify your creative and make it more unique and accessible. Slowly fading are the days where consumers wanted and expected glossy, magazine quality creative. Now the name of the game is authenticity and what better way to embrace that than by using more user-generated content and citizen creator content.

Unfortunately, Content Chaos is Here to Stay

While we encourage embracing citizen content creators and authenticity, we are strongly advising marketers to maintain guidelines and processes. Content chaos will only get worse as more and more citizen creators join the ranks. While you can and should put creativity in the hands of these creators, you should also stick to some integrity guardrails to protect your brand.

One of the best guardrails to minimize this chaos is to have a good digital asset management platform or system. If you don’t have one, don’t panic. The key to starting is to take the first step forward.

Designate one home for creative assets, be it one server or one platform. Make sure to celebrate the system coming online so more people use it. Having a single location for creative materials will make it easier for everyone to find what they need, and will make it easier to manage the content as it comes in.

Experimentation and Personalization Are Key

Gone are the days of “marketers know best.” Today, it’s all about the customer and figuring out what they want at all levels of their interaction with your brand.

People want to feel like brands know them and care about them as an individual and not just another part of their profit margin. Personalization helps with this. From making sure your ads are targeting the right people on the right platforms to allowing people to set their email preferences and even using the first names of customers in emails, personalization is a budget-friendly way to stand out to your customers.

Personalization is its own form of experimentation as well. As AI becomes more and more ingrained in our marketing tech stack, experimentation is more accessible to the average content marketer.

Experimentation will help you figure out what truly works for your customers. Just make sure that you are only testing one variable at a time. That way you can actually determine what does and what doesn’t work.

Value Over Volume

For a long time, brands were able to flood the digital space with content and win customers’ attention. That isn’t the case anymore. There is so much content that a lot of it has become white noise. Now you have to create value to get your customers to engage with your brand. Think quizzes and interactive videos as well as meaningful contests and live content.

You are competing for the attention of a customer base whose attention is pulled in a million directions and that means you have to stand out.

Pivoting your content marketing efforts can sometimes seem daunting but by using a few of these tips and strategies, you will be well on your way to creating a content marketing strategy that turns heads.

Do you need support in content development and a website presence to showcase your content? Contact us to learn more about how we can help.