Before you begin to list down your content marketing plan for 2020, ask yourself this question: “How do I create content to get people hooked? In today’s digital world, the internet has completely revolutionized the way people consume information. Content marketers today, armed with better tools to reach their audiences, have a peculiar challenge to address. Creating content which can keep people engaged is getting tougher every single day.
At the Content Marketing World 2019, Cleveland Ohio, Tamsen Webster, keynote speaker and message strategist, highlighted, in her session”Getting the Green Light: How to Build content People Say Yes To” that today people are inundated with information which makes creating viral content an uphill task. Storytellers need to get their act right and re-imagine their storytelling ways. Boasting about the business you are in or the number of awards you have won is not going to matter to your clients unless you solve their pain points, address their concerns and provide them with answers they seek. It’s essential to reverse engineer your content strategy and put your customer at the heart of the plan.
How to create an audience-first content strategy?
Virality- it’s all about emotions. Anything which goes viral has an emotional element to it. Virality never happens by chance. It needs to be orchestrated.If you can invoke the emotions of your audience through your content,chances of your content going viral are high. So how do marketers accomplish this? Start by understanding your customers and curate customer profiles that emphasize the customer journey. Pay heed to customer feedback and help your customers by giving them the content they desire.
Re-imagine message creation and delivery
Content marketers need to revisit their messaging process and delivery as there is an ever-increasing demand for personalisation in communication.Brands should begin customizing and curating conversational content for individual audiences. Move beyond “brand speak” to a conversational language to address your customer needs. It’s essential to connect with the customers in the language which resonates with them.
Stephanie Stahl, general manager of Content Marketing Institute, underscores the significance of bringing inclusivity to brand conversations. She says, “As brands try to improve the quality of their content and the ways they engage with their communities, they’ll work harder to represent diverse voices – both in their content and among the team members they hire to create that content.Whether written, visual, audio, or event-oriented, content thrives when it includes fresh, thoughtful, and compelling perspectives that reflect all the different communities they serve.”
Make sense of data through emerging technologies
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping marketers in making sense of overwhelming amounts of data for delivering better customer experience and churn out relevant content in time. AI is empowering marketers to analyze user data and intent. Today AI is being used to generate stock updates reports, news feed, etc. automatically. Predictive intelligence and data-driven insights are helping brand marketers in understanding individual customer needs, thereby enabling them to create personalized content fort heir customers.Predictive data analysis impacts lead scoring and help businesses in identifying potential customers, depending on their past buying history. Content marketers should revamp their content strategy with the help of data driven insights for better engagement with their target audience.
Augmented reality and virtual reality for storytelling
A new digital reality is helping marketers in getting better at storytelling.Boundaries between the storyteller and listener are getting blurred thanks to augmented reality (AR),virtual reality(VR), and mixed reality(MR). Marketers can connect experience, narrative and story by merging the listener and storyteller.Augmented and virtual reality have empowered marketers and given a new dimension to storytelling. As a marketer, you can leverage AR/VR to let your audience literally walk in someone else’s shoes. You need to understand your users well to wow them with successful AR/VR experience. In 2020 audiences will demand more of interactive content such as shoppable posts, 360-degree videos, quizzes, and polls etc. Creating immersive experiences through AR/VR can help you in opening up new avenues of storytelling.
According to the report titled “State of Content Marketing” released by SEMrush, a leading online visibility management platform, prevailing content formats are blog posts, case studies and success stories. Social media and emails are considered the most effective distribution channels. Create content that not only generates traffic and quality leads but also resonates with your target audience for better brand engagement and loyalty. As a marketer, you need to be savvy and subtle in storytelling. It will make your brand stand out in the cluttered content marketing landscape. In 2020, content marketing will be driven by personalisation and marketers must marry content with authenticity to make their audience believe in their stories.
The author is the co-founder and managing director at ShakeDeal.
