4 Content Marketing Trends to Follow in 2017

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Published by Larisa Aslanyan on August 3, 2016

Let’s play pretend for a moment: pretend you’re starring in a Broadway play and that your spectators will applaud if you give them a worthwhile show. This scenario isn’t too different from reality if you think of your content as your business’ performance and your buyer personas as your audience who buy your products or services rather than give you a standing ovation.

Today, thanks to the availability of numerous high quality “performances” (and that’s your competition’s content), it is difficult to truly wow the audience; they are now immune to cliché marketing. So, if you don’t take action and provide an interesting plot, your audience is going to walk out and buy tickets to a different play. To give you a hand in crafting content that resonates with your audience and that they truly enjoy, here are the 4 content marketing trends that will keep you on top 2017:

1. Implement a “For You” Approach

In 2017, personalized and user-inspired content will become more and more important for standing out from the crowd. We are all users above all, and if you switch your marketing brain off and turn the user brain on, you’ll know that no one likes to be manipulated. We like the freedom to make a choice and pick the content that is worthy of our time.

Your content needs to go hand-in-hand with reader’s interests and needs, especially since Google’s search robots use customer experience as part of their ranking criteria. Thanks to CRM systems, you can always be informed of customer needs and desires. Readers love when we speak their language, address them directly, and share their opinions.

2. Automate Your Content Calendar

While marketing automation is already a pressing need today, it will be the absolute king in 2017. This is especially true of businesses that have to be engaged in long-term negotiations with the customer.

To nurture your clients, you need effective software tools to keep track of their of interactions. Luckily enough, marketing software solutions are popping up all over the place — no longer is this software only available to companies with multi-million dollar marketing budgets; that same technology is now available to smaller, growing businesses as well!

Today, you have no excuse for not implementing these technological innovations, because they are going to be the standard of tomorrow. Automating your content calendar, organizing all content efforts under a single campaign umbrella, and tracking all content channels to analyze the strategy is what makes your marketing competitive today.

3. Go Visual!

Be honest with us; do you read long texts or keep on scanning and searching until you come across a website where the info is flavored with pictures, infographics, and short videos? We’ll take a guess and say you — like the rest of us — tend to opt for the second option. We all prefer visualized, diverse content because “content” is not just long paragraphs of endless text!

In fact, not every visitor on your website wants long business news. Your site visitors will ask for more details at some point, but in the initial stage of the buyer’s journey they just want a brief overview of the product or service they are considering, so give them the information they’re looking for and communicate your brand story in the most visual way possible.

4. User-Generated Content is a Winner in 2017

Customers should be the keynote speakers on your behalf in 2017 as honest feedback will help you sound trustworthy and connect to new businesses. User-generated content has always been the spice of content marketing. Even if it’s anonymous, content produced by real, everyday people holds more credibility in the eyes of the user than the long blog articles you publish.

With that being said, let’s do an experiment! Go read our reviews and then tell us which piece of content seems more important to you: this blog article or the reviews you just read?

Customer feedback has been the best way to attract new clients for a while now. In 2017, we expect this trend to be more important than ever. People need to know what others experienced while working with your company and experiencing your product. Most importantly, they need to hear it directly from your customers, so turn the shameless self-promotion off and hand over the microphone.

To sum up, out-of-the-box content is all about experimenting and showing creativity. Once you find the in-time tactics, customers will enjoy their digital journey with your company. Learn more about your customer by researching the Zero Moment of Truth, we have an entire ebook just about that. And it’s free!

Larisa Aslanyan

Larisa Aslanyan is a Demand Generation Analyst and PPC Specialist at Waypost Marketing. She has been active in digital marketing since she was a teenager. She is an expert at managing paid ads on Google and Microsoft (Bing), conversion tracking, PR activities, earned media outreach, backlink profile building, and more.

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