Content Strategy Trends: Up Your Digital Marketing Game in 2022

Poppy Malise
January 23, 2022

“Is content marketing alive? Will people in the Metaverse still see my content?”

Well, folks, while it’s great to think about all the opportunities the Metaverse will bring, there’s still a long way to go before that becomes a trend that’s relevant to your business.

In 2021, the internet evolved to include a new trend in digital marketing: short-form video.

Driven by the boringness of being trapped inside our houses (thanks COVID!), people craved more realistic content and began abandoning static picture viewing.

However, our basic approach to distributing written content on the web hasn’t seen such a drastic evolution. Blogs and articles are still some of the most effective methods for reaching the audiences you need to grow your business.

In 2022, content marketing strategy will continue to evolve and become increasingly important as it has always been at the heart of every successful digital marketing campaign.

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Short-Form Video Content to Increase Brand Awareness

The popularity of a new visual content marketing strategy has been highlighted recently by the spectacular rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

We live in a fast-paced world and with an increasing number of people finding their entertainment online, short-form video is becoming more important than ever before. This 2022 digital marketing trend is not only for the average millennial and Gen Zer anymore—professionals are using it, too.

Your business should always be aware of new content marketing trends and use them to your advantage. Using this latest digital marketing trend surely will get your brand more awareness and attention.

People’s attention spans are getting shorter. It takes more than “thoughtful and genuine content” to connect with your target audience and keep them engaged. Focus on the first few seconds of your video by using an engaging opening hook.

You can also start your video with a question like, “Do you know how to shorten your sales cycle and have a strong conversion rate?” and then go on by explaining how they can do just that. Weave an interesting story into your answer to increase audience engagement, emotional connection and watch rate. Providing short-form educational videos is a great way to increase followers’ loyalty and bring them to your website. 

Give your audience a sense of exclusivity by showing them the behind-the-scenes of your business. Your customers want transparency and expect you to interact with them openly and honestly about the goods and services you provide.

Use trending sounds to give your video more views and engagement. You can utilize TOKBOARD to see current trending music on TikTok. They constantly fetch data points from more than 80 million top videos and 5 million users.

You can also find trending sounds on TikTok by clicking the Create (+) button in the app, and clicking Add Sound. You can also check your Instagram Story Music to discover current popular songs.

TikTok Sounds and Instagram Reels music tend to go through waves of popularity. Keep your ears open for popular music that you might be able to riff on. You can also save the sound when you go through your FYP page on TikTok or your Instagram Reels.

Use subtitles to make your visual content marketing more inclusive. Subtitles are the best way to help your brand reach out to audience members that might be hearing impaired or who don’t speak English fluently.

Adding subtitles in various languages will allow you to promote your content worldwide and make it more accessible for everyone. This video marketing trend could prove immensely beneficial, especially if you’re looking for a way to expand your business internationally.

Finally, don’t forget to guide your audience to take the next step with a strong call to action (CTA) at the end of your video. For example, ask them to like and follow for more content or ask them to go to your profile and click your website link.

Your brand can also ride this video marketing trend by collaborating with content creators to craft authentic, fun and viral-worthy content. User Generated Content (UGC) helps humanize your marketing. In fact, 85% of customers think UGC is more trustworthy, more authentic and more appealing. 84% of millennials also report that UGC has some influence on what they buy.

Quality, Relevant, Long-Form Content is King

Now that you understand the importance of visual content marketing for brand awareness, let’s jump into the next 2022 content marketing trend: long-form content.

Long-form content remains highly relevant, even though more of our attention spans are being hijacked by the likes of social media platforms. The short-form video is the content solution for the early stage of your sales funnel, but ultimately you want your audience to visit your website and continue to move down the funnel.

This is where long-form content comes into play. It gives you the opportunity to further tell your brand’s story, build trust with your leads and guide them on their purchasing journey to take action accordingly.

Google E-A-T, or Google’s desire for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness in searchable content, is a mantra that will continue to weigh heavily on the minds of marketers in 2022.

As the latest digital marketing trend, long-form content will continue to be relevant for marketers for several reasons:

  • High-quality content can help improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts by driving more traffic to your website from Google.
  • Google rewards longer pages because it means that you have enough information that someone might actually want to read — and keep reading! — therefore improving their User Experience (UX).
  • Long-form content gives you the opportunity to provide more engaging, useful and value-added information.
  • Quality content helps build your brand’s reputation as an industry thought leader and gives your company a “voice” that people will enjoy reading about.

Average content just won’t perform in any vertical where exceptional content is present.

However, long-form content without optimization and strategy probably will not bring you much traffic, let alone conversions. That’s why, in order to capitalize on this latest digital marketing trend, you’ll need to support your content with a powerful SEO strategy.

In our previous post about 2022 SEO trends, we highlighted how long-form content powered by SEO strategy can enhance your Google organic reach.

Let The Audience Guide You to Understand Their Intention

There is a user that lives behind every search query, and each search is driven by some desire. Understanding their search intention is the foundation of 2022 content marketing for creating valuable and engaging content. You can start intention research by doing keyword research.

Making assumptions about your audience will result in the loss of your business resources. Don’t start creating content before you understand your readers’ intentions and how their search query relates to your business.

The value of your context is a crucial component for winning influence on Google for the keywords you want. Underpinning this deep contextual relation is Google’s algorithm 2019 BERT update that it uses to better understand the meaning behind sentences within all the contextual nuance.

For example, if you’re a SaaS company and your audience’s search query is “best CRM software,” you can create an article from two different angles:

“How to Use The Best CRM Software” or “The Best CRM Software for Small Businesses”

Both of these pieces of content will be relevant to the keyword, but they guide user intent in different ways.

The first piece of content might not seem as relevant at first glance because it doesn’t provide an answer to their question, meanwhile the second one provides information that directly meets the user’s needs as they’re searching for the best CRM software.

Your organic client acquisition success in 2022 hinges on deeply understanding the intention behind a keyword to determine if your content is relevant enough to earn clicks, engagement, and ultimately, conversion.

By doing this research, you will get an unedited insight into your audience’s mind. These insights should guide you in crafting a content strategy that will eventually influence the audience’s purchase behavior.

Your content should clearly and concisely satisfy your audience’s search intent while providing related details that they likely also want to understand as part of their broader Search Quest. Create content for each customer’s journey, find their stopping points and content gaps to ensure a seamless customer experience.

Enhance Your Content with Long-Form Video

Years ago, your brands might have needed to hire a professional videographer to shoot a YouTube video. But today, most of the millennials and Gen Zers in your marketing department can easily make an engaging YouTube video for you. You can then embed this video in your long-form blog posts.

Cisco Visual Networking Index projected that in 2022, video will account for 82% of all online traffic and the average internet user will consume 100 hours of video per month.

Videos embedded in your blog page is not a new trend in digital marketing, but it’s definitely something that you need to do. It offers a totally different way for your audience to consume your content. Instead of reading, they can watch or listen to it. It’s fun and entertaining.

As 2022 content marketing trends indicate, including long-form video will boost your SEO score as well.

When you include the targeted keywords in the video, you can build relevancy and help direct your content to its intended audience. You can also optimize your video content with key moments. After the launch of key moments in 2019, Google started showing video excerpts with timestamps and titles for the query their users were searching for.

Your visual content strategy should include a call to action at the end of your marketing video. Your CTA can be anything that prompts the user to take action, such as signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your channel on YouTube or buying your products and services.

Dynamic Content to Increase Conversion

In this section of our content marketing trends, we want to introduce you to dynamic content. 

Dynamic content is much more efficient in delivering a higher standard of quality than typical, static content. Higher-quality content creates a very positive snowball effect as it improves the overall user experience which, in turn, improves Google organic rankings.

Dynamic content is an interactive user experience where the content transforms fluidly based on who is looking at it. It responds to the needs of the person viewing it which, in turn, makes their experience more customized and personal.

These exceptional 2022 digital marketing trends are also making dynamic content a prime candidate for measuring conversions. Typically, dynamic content is based on user signals that include in-session behavior, user data and user characteristics.

Brands can use dynamic content to create personalized product recommendations and offers based on customer life cycles or geo-specific content. They also allow users to switch between content types, such as images and text. With dynamic content, your team can see which content type your audience prefers and deliver more of it.

The ultimate 2022 trends in content marketing will be seeing a rise in the use of dynamic content with a heavy focus on personalization and customization.

Smart Content Distribution

Your great content will be a waste if your audience doesn’t know it exists.

This latest content marketing trend requires brands to leverage a smart content distribution strategy. You can use Google Search Control data, social media insights or even machine and deep learning to analyze your audience’s demographics and behavior. Doing so will provide them with contextually relevant content across all channels, from social posts with strong organic Google reach to email newsletters.

The future of content marketing is heavily reliant on content distribution. The smarter your distribution, the more successful your business will be with content-first strategies at scale.

Not all types of content are created equal (literally), and each type typically requires its own content distribution plan. You can compile your articles and create an ebook that your audience can access through a gated landing page. You could also turn your content into podcast interviews or videos for YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. You could craft infographics, webinars as well as case studies.

Content distribution is an important component of solving the content marketing puzzle. It is the key to boosting your brand awareness, building a loyal community, and encouraging your readers to click, act and become customers.

Curious to Learn More?

If you’re interested in learning more about our other latest digital marketing trends, check out our other articles. 

ICONS-01
Search Engine Optimization
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Social Media Strategy

Let Us Guide You on Your Content Strategy Journey

So there you have it, our latest content marketing trends to keep in mind for 2022. 

Creating content is not just for the sake of showing off or getting popular, it’s about understanding your audience, providing value and building a smart distribution strategy.

Collaborate with our content-driven SEO agency to maximize the power of your business and craft a powerful brand content experience.

LIVID is a startup and SaaS SEO strategy agency in San Francisco. We help brands just like yours improve digital visibility, shorten the sales cycle, reduce acquisition costs and increase customer retention.

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