A very exciting content marketing year is ahead of us. High quality content will continue to dominate the world of digital marketing, but we expect significant changes in this area. We bring you a prediction that will help shape the digital strategy and determining the budget of content marketing activities.
Personalized content
In 2016 there will be an increase in demand for personalized content, or content tailored to the needs and interests of individuals, and will increase the need for the realization of the content. In the multitude of information available, users are looking for more concrete and specific as content that exactly matches their needs and issues, and at the same time is relevant and reliable. Brands are pushing focus on providing specific information that users seek and position themselves as a source of information which can be trusted, while using the tools and applications that will best segment the target audience and to place her adequate content.
Users at the forefront
Users have long been in the forefront, but next year we’ll go a step further than that, because it was clear that a satisfied customer is also the brand ambassador invaluable – especially at a time when the communication between companies and “ordinary” people on social networks is a common everyday occurrence. The best way to attract new and retain old users is recognizing and rewarding their loyalty and commitment, and thus in line will come more to the fore rule “Engagement equals (almost) free stuff”.
User Generated Content and bloggers
Although the upward trend in the importance of User Generated Content (UGC) is monitored for some time, for the next year its role will more and more important as readily accessible digital tools and increasingly advanced applications almost every user to provide with a bit of effort to be a good photographer, cameraman and author of viral content. With content that users create on social networks, will increase the importance of bloggers and influencers who are “real people”. As co-creators of content with their own impressions and experiences (eg culinary bloggers and beauty bloggers as reviewers of the product), have a very significant impact on consumer opinion and perception and image of a product or service.
Video and only video
Nobody likes to read or type, and even watch videos longer than a minute and a half. Next year in content marketing will mark the video messages, video tips, video, video, video! Whether it comes to education, entertainment or presentation of products and services, video formats, which “tell the story” will be still very popular, but now in a shorter and more dynamic form. Just take a look at the video content that brands publishs directly on Twitter – most lasts less than 30 seconds!
Live stream applications
The growing importance of video will support applications that transmit video to the social networks automatically, live and without editing. Live stream apps and options for displaying content in real-time (Periscope, Blab, Meerkat …) are now ubiquitous tool for storytelling from the scene, and in the next year will be an integral part of digital marketing campaigns of even larger number of brands.
GIF
In an age of information overload, when it is difficult to attract and retain the attention of users, the use of “moving” the visual content is a great way to enhance the digital content marketing strategies. With Facebook, which has finally allowed the use of animated GIFs and smart phones that are equipped with the tools to easily create this type of content, we expect its full implementation in the content marketing strategies in 2016. At the same time, we expect the brands will use GIFs to show customers that they have a very good sense of humor.
Virtual reality content
Virtual Reality is slowly but surely becoming mainstream, which will surely have an impact on the creation of and access to content in the following year. YouTube already offers the ability to publish 3D and VR video which could be viewed with special glasses, and considering the fact that Facebook is the owner of famed Oculus Rift, Zuckerberg is certainly preparing something big in the field of virtual reality.
Presentation of content
In 2016, increasingly spreading will take new ways of presenting content on social networks that will raise the user experience to a higher level. Facebook also introduced a feature that allows instant articles faster loading links and reading the content without leaving Facebook, Twitter even has a Twitter Moments that gathers content based on topic and context (with the emphasis on the visual segment), while Snapchat Story Explorer allows you to view content from multiple perspectives . And we believe that social networks in the next year will surprise all of us with some more new possibilities.
Take a look at this infographic, created by ZenContent, that reveals content marketing budgets, benchmarks and the key trends for 2016:
