7 TRENDS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN TERMS OF CONTENT STRATEGY

Content is at the pinnacle of most marketing strategies with the help of the digital age. As times have changed with an increase of consumers moving to the digital landscape, content as a strategy shouldn’t be overlooked. Content marketing can be considered as a tactic that can drive traffic to your website by creating highly engaging content in various forms. There are different forms of content marketing such as social media, YouTube videos, blogs and webinars just to name a few.

A common mistake that occurs to most is finding the time to do market research. Without performing market research, the content that you’re about to produce might not be relevant to your audience and can defeat the whole purpose of the strategy. Visitors can be put off by companies that are only pushing selling points as a form of content. That is not something to shy away from but it can come across as something that is of only benefit to the company and feels as if it’s just centered around the business.

Here are some of the content trends that will propel in the industry:

1. Social Media
2. VR content
3. Live videos
4. Webinars
5. YouTube videos

Social Media content marketing

1. Social Media content:

Social media platforms has evolved in such a way that its not only used to share an individuals personal experience with something but rather to a point where businesses can expand their reach. There are millions of users that makes use of various platforms so sticking to one can limit your reach. It is best to diversify your reach to the public by being active on majority of these platforms. One needs to closely identify what type of content needs to be produced on the platforms as each and every one of them is different. Popular social media platforms includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.


2. Virtual Reality (VR) content:

Virtual reality can be described as the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. The most recognizable component of Virtual Reality can be the headset goggles that are mounted over ones head. Virtual Reality creates an unreal experience as if it the user were actually inside of the game or video. With competition making it more tense for newbies in the industry, companies need to look in the opposite direction to grab attention. With digital disruption accelerating innovation there are quite a number of options to play around with in order to break the market. Virtual Reality has an appealing concept due to its life like simulated environment in which people can immerse themselves in. Augmented Reality (AR) is where images are overlaid into the camera view. Augmented Reality requires less hardware and is more accessible to the public since it only requires a mobile device or a desktop. There are a number of brands within various industries that created successful campaigns through VR and AR. Clothing brands has taken levels up a notch by allowing consumers to visualize how a certain garment would look on them. The same concept has been spun throughout various brands and some have achieved great success from this.


3. Live Videos:

Live videos can be considered as a direct selling point to consumers due to the personal interaction from a brand or a sales representative. With live videos coming into play, there’s direct and up front communication about the narrative of the brand or product which gives the audience more bait to bight on. With platforms such as Facebook and Instagram contributing to the arena, their live video feature makes direct to consumer selling in a virtual sense more accessible to the public.


4. Live Webinars:

Live webinars are a great way in building relationships and trust within your audience. Webinars can rub off your audience in extremely beneficial ways that works well within the company or brands’ favor. You can create content that’s not only informative but promotional at the same time. It’s as if you’re taking the time out to understand your audience and to give them something first before they perform any transaction with you. A webinar is roughly about 30 – 60 minutes long. It should be structured in a way that it captivates your audience and that times of viewing are accessible to the majority.


5. YouTube videos:

YouTube has grown exponentially over the years with an audience of 4 billion that’s ever increasing on the platform. One of the few goals of advertising is to get your brand across many eyes while spending the least. Videos are appearing in Google’s text results page due its rise in popularity. Being active on YouTube can make your website a bit easier to rank on search results due to the search engines finding popularity and engagement from your site. If your content speaks volumes, your audience might even promote for you.
Here’s how you can grow your web traffic with YouTube.


HOW YOUTUBE HELPS YOU DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE

YouTube mobile

Running and maintaining a website can be challenging. If the right resources are utilized with consistent monitoring in place, you can generate the results that you desire. The practices involved in website traffic generation is an ongoing process that involves constant adjustments and fresh ideas to be added on a continuous basis. It’s not a one man show at the end of the day to put it quite frankly.

Even if your website has the best of functionality or an appealing aesthetic to grip visitors’ attention, one has to consider a mix of marketing strategies. A marketing mix is a pool of various tactics to achieve a marketing goal. One strategy to drive website traffic to your website would be utilize media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. There are millions of active users on social media platforms that can be a potential visitor to your website. A potential high traffic driving platform is YouTube.

How YouTube content can drive traffic to your site

Each and everything has its pros and cons. YouTube is no exception as it does require hard work and a knack to grow the platform. Video content creation has seen a surge in activity due to the next generation being tech. savvy and well versed with media. If you have a team that’s willing to put in the work to create informative, appealing and appropriate video content, you have one foot in the doorway.

1. YouTube has a high number of active users:

According to statistics, YouTube has 2 billion active users on the platform with a percentage of 42,9% of all global internet users with access to the platform per month, according to statistics. The popular age group within the group of active users are between the age range 15-35. Women are amongst the most popular users of the platform. If your content is good enough, there is an audience of 2 billion where your content can reach in order to extract a portion of it to visit your website.

2. Visitor preferences may vary

Some of your visitors may prefer viewing videos rather than reading text. It depends entirely on the type of visitor. For the avid readers, they might enjoy scrolling through your blog page while others might only enjoy a short video clip. It depends on ones attention span and the time to get to the information that they were looking for. Some individuals might not want to read through hundreds of words to get to a certain piece of information whereas some would not might want to wait 5 to 10 minutes for a certain point in a tutorial video.

On the bright side, if you’re doing video content you don’t have to create entirely new videos from scratch. You can re-purpose your written knowledge base articles and create an on screen recording explaining the steps. The written articles are just your video narrations in text form.

YouTube Page

3. Video marketing acts like a charm

If there are users that can find your video content informative, relevant to their requests and has a close match with what your website portrays, tend to one they would want to visit your website. If both of your platforms contain the information that they’re looking for on a consistent basis, they might even be frequent visitors to your site. If both your website and YouTube platform works hand in hand, visitors might even refer others to your site by word of mouth or by sharing content.

4. YouTube can act as a potential source of revenue

If your YouTube channel becomes extremely popular, you could potentially earn another stream of income. Making money off YouTube may be part of your model or not but it does come with pros and cons. The pro, obviously being making money and driving a solid audience whereas the con may be that your channel is restricted by laws and regulations from YouTube or the website/page owner.

Keep in mind that YouTube can change its algorithm which can affect your impressions and audience reach. It may even restrict your page if it wants to which can affect your audience in the long-run. In order to protect your channel from loosing its audience, you would want to think of other platforms to keep them within your targeting pool such as newsletters, blog posts or other social media platforms.

5. Make sure that your YouTube is easily accessible

It’s of best practice to ensure that your YouTube page is easily accessible and highly visible to the public. Ensure that there are links within your website and newsletter that can direct visitors to the YouTube page. Drive your audience from other platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to your YouTube page. Newsletters are highly effective and can be a highly engaging tool that can drive an audience to YouTube. It’s best to optimize your videos by using relevant keywords. Constantly promote new videos in your newsletters in the form of tutorials as a way to keep on driving your audience to the channel.