Today, in 2014, practically every single discussion about marketing will focus on content. Content strategy is the way forward, the way into the future. For those who don’t know what that is, here’s a short definition: Content marketing implies the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content in order to attract a well-targeted audience, from which to later on drive profit. Now that that’s clear, let’s take a look at 4 ways in which the content marketing world is predicted to change in the near future.
Transparency
Content marketing is about creating useful, relevant and informative content, not just original one. Plenty of websites jumped on the content bandwagon, but did so in the wrong way. Disguising your advertorials as articles is not the way to go. Create articles with relevant information that users want to read, and you will win their trust and loyalty more than you could ever do with a thinly veiled sales pitch.
Results
Content marketing is relatively new, and so the focus right now is on doing it and doing it right. But in the months and years to come, businesses will want to know if the efforts have paid off, if they made the right choice. And so pressure will be placed on content creators to deliver results, be that in page views or sales.
Distribution
Creating original content is all good and well, but you also have to make sure it gets to where it needs to go. If no one can read your fantastic new article, then it’s still no good. Content can be distributed in two main ways: either on your own website, or on someone else’s. But businesses need to get creative with their content distribution, or else risk falling behind the curve.
Quality
Everyone is jumping on the content marketing bandwagon, and so the number of web articles is rising exponentially. Thus, quality will become more and more important. If you don’t create truly great content, something that will amaze and wonder readers, then you will simply be buried in the mass of millions of other equally average articles.
