Trend #1: Video Content Will Continue to Reign Supreme

Videos are already a popular engagement tool but will dominate the content world for years to come.

As users develop shorter attention spans with less time on their hands, videos are becoming more consumable on-the-go. Regardless of length or format, a well-made video can relay your message in a way that resonates strongly with your audience.

There are now more video creation tools across desktop and mobile, and the production process is less intimidating and easier to incorporate into content marketing strategies.

But video creation is only half the battle, so follow up by optimizing their search discoverability to boost views and drive those all-important conversions.

To do this, confirm your videos are found by Google using the Video Indexing Report in Google Search Console, make your videos the focus of their webpages, and optimize those pages’ contents for video-related queries.

Pro tip: The Video Indexing Report in Google Search Console can show you if Google has issues including videos on your website into search results.

Trend #2: Personalized Content Becoming Mainstream

Today’s users crave content that speaks directly to their individual preferences, wants, and needs, which has resulted in content personalization expanding into many different forms.

“Spotify Wrapped”—a yearly recap for every Spotify user with individualized data points from their past year of listening—is a prime example of hyper-personalized content at its zenith.

But there are myriad ways brands can use personalization to their advantage. In e-commerce, for instance, interactive quizzes are helping brands improve their product recommendations and personalize the shopping experience.

To get the most out of your efforts, leverage customer data to track how your users interact with your content and inform your targeting based on their behaviors and preferences.

Pro tip: Leverage customer data platforms to analyze your users’ behaviors and preferences beyond a campaign-only lens since today’s users interact with brands across multiple channels.

Trend #3: AI for Content-Creation, Humans for Value-Creation

Speaking of data-driven approaches, AI is revolutionizing how marketers ideate, create, serve, and measure content.

Computer programs have long been writing data-centric content like weather forecast, financial reports, and sports recaps. More recently, AI content generation has become a hot topic for marketers, with AI content tools creating everything from ad copy, product descriptions, to entire blog articles.

AI is also helping marketers deliver personalized experiences, predict winning creatives, and identify SEO keywords and topic clusters for content optimization.

But that doesn’t mean brands will necessarily forgo human writers and the insights, humor, and empathy they bring. Instead, a marriage of the two will be likelier as they find their niches.

How AI will be used and applied to different content types also remains to be seen. But the smart marketers will be those who figure out early on how it’s going to fit into their workflow to help them scale while still maintaining content quality.

Pro tip: Experiment by assigning human and AI tasks to different team members—not to pit them against each other, but to have them compare human vs. AI strengths and weaknesses relative to your content marketing needs.

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Content is transforming—and on top of how we create it, how we market it will need to adapt to new and increasingly unique trends and strategies if we are to cut through the online clutter.