Every year, Semruush releases their state of content marketing report. After downloading a copy, I am happy to report that the state of content marketing is strong.
One proof point: 47% of companies plan to grow their content teams in 2022. And the main takeaway is one that serves as the foundation for our own firm’s existence:
According to the report, the solution to an effective content marketing program lies in “avoiding ad hoc content creation and case-by-case analysis and instead building a strategy and mapping clear processes.”
The report provides a snapshot of the top content marketing trends and tips on how to build a successful content strategy in 2022. I was honored to include one of the key trends we’re seeing in content marketing. And look forward to sharing that with you below.
But first, some highlights:
- 78% of companies that succeed in content marketing document their content marketing strategy
- 65% of companies that succeeded in content marketing conduct content audits
- 22% more people asked the question: “What is content marketing?”
- Content marketing tools is the most popular topic in content marketing
- Content marketing plan is the most popular search related to content marketing
My Content Marketing Trend
I have always believed that marketing should deliver measurable outcomes. In fact, we use the Semrush Visibility Tracker to show results for all our clients.
Here’s a few examples:
Healthcare Technology Company
Marketing Technology Company
We help to deliver these results for new clients through an annual content plan and weekly blog articles.
However, one of our biggest trends is updating old content. Here’s an example of one of our oldest clients and the results they see from a combination of new and updated weekly content:
This works because we look for pages that previously ranked or have declining search traffic. And we give them a little content refresh, updated publish date, and a little social boost.
And this is how we’ve grown from nothing to getting nearly 1 million page views a month and ranking for nearly 100,000 keywords:
We mix in fresh and refreshed content in our weekly content publication schedule. We publish 2 original, keyword-focused articles every week, followed by 2 refreshed articles from our library of over 1,500 published articles.
My 2022 Content Marketing Prediction
With Semrush’s permission, here is my 2022 content marketing trend prediction.
In 2022, content marketing leaders are mainly focusing on how to get the best results from existing content marketing efforts. Sure, some will say that Video, AR, VR, Voice, and probably even AI are the biggest trends in content marketing.
But if you talk to real content marketing innovators, they are looking for those simple 20% of things that will deliver an 80% upside. For us, we’re doing more content updating, pruning, and repurposing.
The trick is to find content that performed well in the past. Maybe it had page-one rankings or high traffic, great conversions, or high page authority. But if a page has lost those results, it is ripe for pruning or updating.
Updating this content will become less of a side project and more of the main project for many content marketers. We have seen lost rankings come back, traffic return, and lead-driving results from updating quality pages and pruning (re-directing) some of our non-performing older content.
To read this and more from Semrush State of Content Marketing Report, click here.
Content Marketing Trends for 2022
Late last year, I wrote about 12 content marketing trends every business should be following. The 3 main ones I wrote about include:
1. The Resurgence of Content Marketing
In the past, new company startup founders and Business-toBusiness SaaS marketers would first consider buying social media ads in order to grow their business. “We need to be on Tiktok,” they would think. Or, “we need to hire a social media intern.”
Now, we are seeing them return to the value of content marketing after learning that no one buys much of anything from social media. In fact, Google themselves told us that content marketing is the best way to rank for buyer search terms. Further, industry research confirms that spending on content marketing is projected to grow by double digits in 2022.
2. AI-Generated Content
While we believe that there are plenty of efficient ways to automate content marketing, the promise of AI-generated content remains far off. We do tap into some AI-driven content marketing strategies and AI_driven content promotion for clients. But in the future, we do believe AI will begin to force us to reconsider what we create and why.
We have tested a few AI-generated content services and have been disappointed in their ability to create quality blog content or long form articles that is anything close to the level of quality required for ranking in search or meeting audience expectations.
For now, we will have to face what I call “The Paradox of AI:” The more the robots tell us what to do, the more we will need real people (employees and customers) to create and share that content. Which leads us to my final big 3 prediction for content marketing in 2022.
3. Employee activation. With the need for more human, authentic and thought leadership content, brands will continue turning to executives, employees, experts, and customers to create more and more content that helps buyers.
I get by with a little help from my friends. So feel free to check out one of my top posts from a few years back on content marketing predictions from 20 experts in the industry where you’ll hear about:
- Content marketing technology scaling
- Video marketing trends
- Is podcasting the next big thing
- backlash, resistance to content marketing
- acceptance of content marketing
- how content marketing scales
- moving from content to experiences
- content marketing aligning better with sales
- cross-enterprise content marketing coordination
- brand storytelling
- amplification and content distribution
- personalization
- buyer alignment and customer journeys
- content merging with media and data
- content working better than ads
These content marketing predictions are few years old but I think it’s very interesting to see how the predictions have held up (or not) over the last few years.
Are you interested in engaging and converting new customers for your business using the most important digital marketing trend: consistent and quality content? Check out our weekly blog content service. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.
The post My Prediction for The State of Content Marketing 2022 appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.
0 Commentaires