Well, it’s 2017, and lo and behold – we’re still using the internet for just about everything we do. With search engines like Google at our fingertips, we’re all professionals in the sense that we have access to information prior to almost ANY purchase.

So naturally, we can all agree that the content you distribute on the internet for your potential customers MUST be informative, creative, and relevant. Moving forward, distributions tools are only going to get more clever and customers expectations and standards will increase – which means anyone with a digital presence will need to adapt and find new ways to continue creating remarkable content.  

What can we expect in 2017? Here are a few of our best predictions:

1. The Power of Video

This one almost goes without saying – it’s going to continue making a large impact in 2017. With the recent addition of Instagram video as well as several new live additions to Facebook: it’s become quite apparent that major social networks are adapting to the need for instant gratification. Businesses that have a strong social media presence are already using live video feeds to display “behind-the-scenes” footage and examples of customers enjoying their products/services. In June, last year, Cisco predicted that video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic. Surely this trend will continue gaining traction moving forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Messages Will Become Less Conceptual and More Customer-Centric

Tying back to the purpose of the first prediction: instant gratification will continue to prevail. This is a point that can likely be made every. single. year. As technology improves and continues to serve us, our expectations for instant information grow more and more ridiculous. Elaborate advertising campaigns may become less effective as customers place a higher priority on instant information in both the product and service industries. Throughout 2017, you can be sure to see messages conveyed by advertising/marketing agencies become less complicated and far more concise.

 3. The Importance of Brand-Owned Content

Well, this point puts heavy emphasis on the purpose of content marketing: informative, creative, and relevant content within your specific industry that represents your brand. Original content is everything. To further elaborate – just about everything that can be talked about these days, has been talked about. Heck, we’re willing to bet someone else has created a blog with the same concept of “content marketing trends” already – but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to put our own mark on the idea in the form of original content. That’s why blogging, vlogging, and any form of expressing your ideas and knowledge is becoming increasingly important these days.  As 2017 starts, we’re fairly certain that they will only become more and more prevalent.

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You’re more than welcome to take all of this with a grain of salt, but based on trends in the past 5-10 years alone – we believe with utmost confidence that content marketing as a whole will continue to evolve as does everything else in the world of sales and marketing. In case you need a little help adapting to these trends, feel free to book a consultation with us today and we’ll go over the ways we can help you maximize your content marketing efforts.