Content Marketing Trends in 2017 (Part 2)

Preface:

The 2017 Content Marketing Trends (Part 1) mentioned the influence and importance of native advertising and influencer marketing (KOL) in the coming year. This article (Part 2) focuses on interpreting trends in areas such as content collaboration, mobile devices, and marketing automation.

I’ve seen many great content marketing projects fail because of the wrong workflow and not enough people working on the content experience.

I believe content strategy and personalized content recommendations are core areas regarding content distribution pipelines. Great content is one thing, but if you don’t have a working strategy in terms of user experience or the proper use of advanced technology, we’re all dead.

When I think of content strategy, I think of how most companies don’t have a content marketing process in place in addition to their marketing campaigns. I think of people like Kristina Halvorson, Lisa Welchman, and Ann Rockley in the smart content space. We scheduled twice as many sessions on building a content marketing process at this year’s forum as ever. In order for our processes to work well over time, they need to be scalable and customizable.

Is there anyone who hasn't played Pokémon Go? How many times have you heard people say that this is the year of the mobile device? Well, with more and more users now owning at least one device with VPN capabilities, this year may be the year of mobile devices. Simply put, if your content isn’t available for mobile devices, you’re in big trouble.

My good friend Jeff Rohrs, CMO of Yext, will be giving a talk at the CMI Forum on the mobile inflection point and looking at what opportunities we may have missed, and this year he has also added a new talk on content design and mobile. We had originally intended to do a dedicated mobile series this year, but so many of the talks touched on mobile that it was a natural transition since most of the content we develop is released on mobile first.

Disclaimer: Before you choose any technique for your content marketing, first make sure you have a sound marketing strategy in place. OK, this must be said.

Once you have a sound marketing strategy in place, one look at Scott Brinker’s massive infographic on marketing techniques (below) will make any marketer wonder which one to choose. So yes, we have a series of talks dedicated to techniques and tools (there are 12 other talks on different content marketing techniques), but I was really interested in Paul Roetzer’s talk on machine learning. This isn’t just about looking at content from a future perspective anymore, AI and machine learning are already playing a role in the content marketing space now, and we have to start paying attention.

Writing is still important, perhaps more important than ever. Instead of focusing on writing, marketers are crazy about social media and video, not understanding that the majority of our communications still rely on words and stories. Let’s be honest, most marketers write terrible articles. From finding freelance writers to how to be a better digital copywriter , we’ve had more talks about writing this year than ever before (yes, even in this social media age). Of course, there will be Ann Handley giving a speech.

A few years ago I had a wonderful conversation with Marcus Sheridan. While he loved our agenda for Content Marketing World 2014, he also reminded me of a sad fact: most organizations are driven by sales, and if we didn’t invite salespeople to the event, marketers would probably be banging their heads against the wall when they returned to the office.

Marcus is 100% correct as always, CMW is evolving into a marketing & sales type conference. To prove this point, we added an entire series this year on sales and sales integration, as well as a webinar hosted by Marcus and Ian Altman, author of the best-selling book Same Side Selling, on how the best-performing companies are integrating sales and content marketing.

I think this needs no explanation. Every year the number one question is “How do I demonstrate results from my content marketing program?” At this year’s CMI Forum we had over 10 presentations on improving ROI, driving performance and sales through content marketing. Compiled by Jiuzhilan Team: How Companies Track Content Marketing Metrics and ROI (Part 1) (Part 2)

Recently I learned something about email marketing. First, email marketing is far from dead and may be more important than ever to your content marketing programs. Second, most businesses (99% of them) send spam disguised as content to our key users every day.

Then, as many B2B companies do, they moved from email marketing alone to marketing automation. I recently spoke with a senior strategist who believed that marketers only leverage 10% of the power of marketing automation software (and 10% is a high estimate). The simple answer is that most people are using marketing automation wrong.

This article will bring you a new interpretation: [ Dry Goods ] Marketers must read: Marketing Automation White Paper, because it is closely related to your content creation project.

Again, I think the trend right now is less content and more promotion. We cannot afford to create content and execute content projects only to have them not be disseminated and promoted.

We made a documentary about content marketing: The Story of Content Marketing: The Rise of a New Way of Marketing, specifically to help marketers like you gain executive buy-in. It definitely helps, but we need to do more. Content marketing is a way of doing business if you want it to be…but many of the executives we work with are still stuck using the traditional 4Ps model.

The 2015 Content Marketing World Forum attracted 40% of the Fortune 100 companies to attend. Each of these 40% of companies operates globally. This means that businesses face complex processes, decentralized teams, communication issues, political problems, and a variety of user experiences. In short, it's hard.

We added a series on global strategy this year, with presentations from companies like Oracle and Rockwell Automation.

I am fascinated by the movement of corporations turning into media companies. Red Bull Media Studios was one of the first companies to formally create a media subsidiary within the company. PepsiCo and Mondelez recently announced plans to run their content organizations as profit centers. The movement was massive and was getting more and more violent.

After Arrow Electronics (a Fortune 500 manufacturer) purchased a number of media assets from UBM (the parent company of a content marketing agency), we decided to explore their core strategy.