I also hope you've got your goals set up and if you work in marketing or PR, you have your work goals as well.
But to achieve those professional goals, you'll have to be aware of what's going on in the industry and consider what might make your job easier or more difficult, what could be an opportunity or a thread.
Threads especially must be considered early as these are risk factors that can ruin your efforts.
So what should you expect in the world of content marketing in 2020?
Quite a few exciting things. And some pretty logical focus areas.
I've picked out three key trends that in my opinion are crucial and you can check out the other seven in a nice infographic below.
With so much content in various formats out there, it's becoming more and more difficult to stand out. For your content to truly reach who you want, you have to be more strategic than ever. You need to research your target customers and create content specifically for them because otherwise your efforts won't reach anybody important to you. I've always spoken about the importance of defining your buyer personas and their buyer's journey and in 2020 that'll be even more important, in fact, without it I don't think you'll succeed.
I've also always said that the end goal of any content piece for a business (not a fun blog like this) should be sales. Your content needs to sell for you 24/7. But if you don't have a proper strategy, if you don't have your buyer personas and their buyer's journey defined, then you are just shooting in any direction and you won't be able to prove the ROI of your content marketing efforts. Invest in some strategic content planning and the right tools to measure your efforts and this will make a huge impact on your business. Especially if you work in PR, it's about time you did this.
I like writing and sometimes I like writing long pieces. I also used to read long pieces of content. Now I scan written content or fast-forward video. I think we've lost our patience and time is too sacred. And even though we now prefer video or visual formats, it's clear that the shorter the better. I don't have the patience for a 5+ minute long video. This means that you'll have to become very focused in terms of your messaging and learn to get your point across quickly. I've started writing shorter pieces lately and I'm still thinking about how to optimise for brevity. You should too.
These three trends are the most important in my opinion. Of course, AI and voice search are on the rise, video and interactive content as well but the above to me make sound business sense because they are not just a passing trend or a temporary spike of interest until you figure out the dynamics of certain technology. They are strategic and long-term.
Take a look at the below infographic for more details on the other seven content marketing trends for 2020.
Which trends are you ready for?