Happy new year! With the new year comes new communications strategies. With that said, here are some digital content marketing trends to consider when developing your 2017 strategies, courtesy of Jessica Gow writing for the Huffington Post.
1. Dark social
These days, the majority of content is shared through dark social – platforms such as messaging apps (e.g. Whatsapp), email and text. These platforms can’t be measured by traditional analytics programmes. Leverage these platforms to amplify your message.
2. Real-time video
Audiences are increasingly looking to video – particularly, live video – to engage with brands. By providing a raw, spontaneous and unedited look at brands, live video can help establish a real and strong connection with audiences.
3. Micro influencers
Brand advocates, or micro influencers, can help build brand awareness and a community of followers. With anywhere from 500 to 10,000 followers on social networks, Gow points out that micro influencers “have significant influence, and an authenticity that can be tricky to harness with more well-known personalities. Encouraging and leveraging content from micro influencers shows the community that they’re valued, as well as increasing brand reach and, in turn, increasingly the likelihood of conversions”.
4. Augmented reality
This increasingly utilized field of communications includes 360-degree video and virtual activities that blend with the real world. Think Pokémon Go. As Gow points out, these activities “support brand storytelling, and offer consumers new reasons to interact with brands”.
5. Programmatic advertising and promotion
Paid promotion is essential to effective content marketing. Using this approach, more and more brands are focusing on programmatic targeting, that is showing specific content to different people based on their past behaviour. This takes content personalization to the next level, helping to increase brand engagement. Facebook and other social platforms are supporting this approach through a range of functionalities.
Featured image: DaPuglet, Flickr Creative Commons
