Keeping up with the latest content trends can be a challenge. But, to succeed in a fast-paced marketing world and maintain a sense of relevance, it’s vital to know which trends to stay ahead of. Or hire a content agency to do it for you!
Here are some of the top content marketing trends to explore in 2024.
1. Emphasising quality over quantity
Regularly producing high quality content that portrays your business as a thought leader is more important than ever. In order to help you stand out from competitors and gain trust with your audience, you or your content marketing agency should be producing brilliant content.
Google prioritises high quality content that is helpful and reliable. This means there’s a growing need for content that solves users’ problems and offers practical advice.
2. Short-form video content will continue to rule
While long-form videos are still useful in certain instances, B2C and B2B marketers have found that getting to the point with short-form videos can be more effective. Highly engaging short-form content can grab the attention of users and quickly tell them about your brand.
More and more consumers are spending time scrolling through social media and watching short-form videos, including Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts and TikToks. Not only this, but many social media users are turning into active buyers. A large range of products are being sold on TikTok Shop, making it super important for brands to leverage on video content. If you’re looking to improve on lead generation, increase your online sales and improve conversion rates, hiring a TikTok agency can help.
3. Creating content that reflects brand values
Research shows that 82% of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with their own. To stay in your audience’s good books, your brand needs to make a point of showcasing its values. This includes sharing opinions and stances on relevant topics. A good way to do this is through high quality long-form content such as blogs and articles. Your business is able to appear as a thought leader and discuss current issues or industry news that it cares about.
4. Sponsored content is still valuable
A sponsored post is a piece of posted content that a brand pays for to reach its target audience online. It’s an effective way of getting your content to the right people in order for them to take action. Brands are quickly recognising the many benefits of using paid social media ads. In the UK, social media ad spend grew 15.6% in 2023 and is set to reach £8.8bn in 2025.
It’s becoming increasingly effective to make social ads not look like ads at all. An experienced paid social specialist will make your ads fit into your audience’s social media feed. This is known as ‘native advertising’ – ads that match the look and feel of the media format they appear on. Since native ads don’t ‘feel’ like traditional ads, consumers are more likely to take notice of them.
5. Blogging isn’t going anywhere
Blogs are still one of the top content formats for marketers. They have been a common marketing strategy since brands started building their websites and continue to be used because they work. Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more monthly leads than those that don’t have active blogs.
Essentially, sites with robust blogs have more search potential and can implement SEO strategies much better. They also allow more opportunities to link directly to a landing page, contact page or shop page. According to a HubSpot survey, 56% of consumers have purchased something from a company after reading a blog post.
6. Infographics are in
Infographics are a brilliant way to depict information visually. They have the shareability and aesthetic appeal of a good photo and are packed with helpful data. This makes them extremely engaging to web visitors and social media users. When you use credible and relevant data, your audience is also more likely to trust your brand. Original graphics perform best so it’s useful to invest in a graphic design agency to produce top-notch visual content for your business.
7. Leveraging AI
AI is quickly gaining popularity in the content marketing space. It has the ability to streamline processes and allow you more time to pursue other tasks or projects. AI tools can be helpful to generate ideas, research and edit content, but it’s not capable of replicating the emotional intelligence and creativity of humans. Generative AI models use algorithms to predict outputs, so be aware that AI can produce incorrect information, low quality content or repetitive copy. This can affect your overall content strategy and even your SEO efforts as Google prioritises original, human-written content.
Stay ahead of content marketing trends
Having a solid content strategy and regularly posting high quality content can be time consuming. As a content marketing agency, our team will do everything for you from creating a winning strategy to producing captivating content and monitoring results. Plus, we’re always up to date with the latest trends in content marketing and can decide which is worth implementing for your brand.
Get in touch to find out more.
