The fact is that content marketing is consistently evolving. Exactly like previous years if you have been observant, content marketing remains the main strategy to acquire new customers and increase brand awareness.

In addition, this makes sense because more businesses in 2017 have had significant success with content marketing when compared to that of 2016. The key to having consistent success in this effort is your capability to foresee imminent trends and embrace the changes as soon as possible.

In this article, I will explore important trends, which in 2018 will shape content marketing.

Content production

For a small business, content marketing is the sure way for the acquisition of new customers regarding the fact it doesn’t need a huge budget. Nevertheless, according to various reports, mega-brands such as Google, Facebook, and Apple are investing thousands of dollars to get original content. Therefore, original and consistent content is apparently all the frenzy irrespective of your business type – small or big.

As 2017 winds away, brands are expected to spend more in 2018 considering the numerous success of their content marketing strategy. This is why content marketing will be more competitive like never before. So, hiring a content team is important if your business is directly determined by producing relevant and high-quality content on a consistent basis.

You can begin with a well-documented content strategy while planning an editorial calendar to modernize the entire content marketing process. You should define the roles of the content team to help keep everyone on the same line. After this, you can evaluate your growth on a consistent basis while refining your strategy as you forge ahead.

Video marketing

The next future of content marketing is video. According to Cisco, by 2019 video will encompass about 80 percent of internet traffic generated. In addition, a large number of marketers also agree to the report and conclude that video will be the dominant content marketing strategies in the future.

If you could incorporate video into your content marketing strategy or your sales process, it will provide a self-serve service for your customers. Using this strategy gives you the opportunity of distributing accurate information without your salespeople being involved.

Besides video, another emerging trend, which is speedily becoming the standard across industries, is live streaming. For your business to stay ahead of your competitors, you must find innovative ways of using this video platform to get new customers.

Overall, due to the transparent nature of live video marketing, it does work. Every customer or potential client like brands that are “real and cool.” Live videos enable you to see what is taking place behind the scenes while allowing you to make your customer become more familiar with you.

Content personalization

There are indications that brands that invest in a different kind of content personalization in 2018 will out outsell those without a personalized content by over 20 percent. In short, the effectiveness of content personalization strategy is unquestionably high for any brand that adopts it.

Of course, I won’t say content personalization is an easy task, it is challenging. It requires a long-term effort by anyone involved in your content creation. Nevertheless, you can start by developing an onsite focused campaign through dynamic content blocks and modal popups. You may also consider using email automation as a way of informing your customers by offering important information at the right time.

User-generated content

Most brands are investing in specifically user-generated campaigns, which inspires loyal customers to become brand advocates and share their positive experience with friends and family on social media.

User-generated content on social networks functions as social proof since human beings have the tendency of trusting and following the choices and actions of other people. Actually, people have confidence in content made by others than they trust the brands’ own content.

The use of User-generated Content is prevalent mostly on Instagram, where most brands use hashtags and create fascinating stories. User-generated content also increases your user visibility and engagement. These two are important factors that ultimately increase your brand awareness.

Content marketing just like any kind of marketing discipline changes over time. You must respond to the latest trends else, you will be swept off your foot. It is therefore imperative that you do all that is possible to stay ahead of your competitors before the trends become obsolete.