It’s the time of year when many marketers are looking to the future and trying to establish what trends will appear or will continue to find popularity in 2017. For content marketers, 2016 has been a big year, but the sector continues to evolve rapidly, so it’s important for strategists to stay abreast of the latest goings on. Understanding how the industry might change in coming months will certainly affect many brands’ strategies, so it’s wise to focus on how the trends could affect future content creation and marketing efforts.
Video set to dominate
During 2016, video began to find increasing appeal with audiences, and this is set to continue next year. Digital video platforms like YouTube have become extremely popular with millenials; that is, those aged between 18 and 34 years old. For many, instead of watching primetime television, or even streaming entertainment on Netflix, YouTube is now the go-to website. In fact, a recent study by YouTube found that 35 per cent of millenials prefer watching videos on the platform, compared to the 18 per cent that still enjoy traditional TV viewing. In addition, 74 per cent to those liking YouTube state they watch brand, institute and company uploaded videos; a fact that should offer some great marketing opportunities for content strategists.
Mobile-friendly formats become necessary
The rise of smartphone use has been somewhat meteoric, and depending on which report is being read, it’s expected that between 65 and 75 per cent of total Internet use will stem from mobile devices in 2017 – that’s around three hours a day per person. This means that advertising campaigns have to be optimised for mobile use to stand any chance of success.
Content marketers will need to focus on mobile-friendly content formats that do not require consumers to refer back to a desktop browser at a later date. Meanwhile, a lot of thought will need to go into accelerating loading pages for websites and content.
More investment in content
One thing is clear for 2017 – the amount of money being invested into content will rise. A recent study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute in partnership with MarketingProfs showed that around 63 per cent of B2BC marketers believe their marketing efforts this year have been as good as, if not better than, twelve months ago.
With many firms more confident about their content marketing efforts, it’s likely that investment into this activity will increase. Some estimates suggest that 8 per cent of content marketing budgets will be pushed into content creation, with the remainder used to both advertise and promote the material.
The use of AI
Finally, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to continue growing in 2017. A few content marketers began experimenting with AI this year, utilising machine-generated content for the first time. For example, product specification lists could be used by AI to generate product descriptions.
This is likely to continue being an area of interest over the next twelve months, particularly in offering customers personalised experiences and helping to translate material into other languages for greater audience reach.
