7 Content Marketing Tips and Trends for 2020

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for some new ways to improve your content marketing.

To help you out, we’ve compiled seven of the biggest content marketing tips and trends for 2020 according to Fifth Story’s leadership team.

Content Trend #1: Ensure your site is voice search ready

ComScore estimates that 50% of all searches in 2020 will be voice queries. This is due to the fact that our smartphones make it much easier to ask a question versus typing into a little screen (especially on the go), as well as the rise of home voice activated assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Home, etc.)

With this in mind, it is more important than ever for brands to ensure their websites are SEO ready for voice search. A few tips to ensure your brand is voice ready:

• Make sure your site loads quickly to ensure that Google rewards it in search results and users don’t bounce, and so that it’s a good user experience on mobile. Design your site for mobile – remember simplicity with a smaller screen space.
• Ensure you have quality content that’s updated frequently on your website in both short and long formats. Your content should answer questions that people ask with voice search. With text search, a user will search one to four words. With voice, they are going to speak in full sentence questions. Having FAQs is a smart way to ensure you are spelling things out to be found in voice search.
• Use simple words and sentences to ensure it’s easy to match with voice search queries.
• Promote your content with social share buttons and on your own social channels and other quality related sites (backlinks). The more influence your site has with your target audience, the more it will be rewarded by Google in search results.

Content Trend #2: Brands need to focus on qualitative measurement in PR and Marketing

Using audience reach data to show the success of a campaign only provides the potential “eyeballs” that see a story, not the real engagement.

The focus needs to be on tone, key messaging and engagement over page views and likes to build brand awareness and trust. Going forward, focus less on views and more on positive conversations and content.

MRP allows you to generate reports that will show you the results of a campaign, indicating standard KPIs or custom KPIs, as well as tone analysis to see how the message was received and help you tell a story with the data, not just reach numbers.

Content Trend #3: Personalized content will be a priority in 2020

More multimedia content will be produced in 2020.

Content will move, reply, reorganize and customize more than ever. The more personal and hands on the content, the more meaningful to the audience.

Content distribution will become hyper-personalized, as brand marketers will increasingly use data analytics to identify customer needs and segment audiences into defined needs-based buyer groups.

AI-based tools will be used to personalize the message, experience and channel based on what’s relevant to each group and what will drive engagement. Getting attention is great, but marketers must keep that attention.

Content Trend #4: Content quality will need to be first class 

Content is why people consume media, read newspapers, listen to radio and go online. Great content identifies issues, solves problems, connects with readers and provokes thought.

Content is the reason consumers come to your website, so it’s essential to make sure that yours is first rate. It could have one of the biggest impacts on your business in 2020.

Put yourself in the shoes of your website visitor to gain perspective.

• Does each page of content concisely provide consumers with what they’re looking for?
• Does the content succinctly speak to the visitor’s intention and purpose?
• Is the content simple to understand, does it have value?
• Does it explain the product/service, its applications and how your offerings are different (and better) than your competitors’?

Content Trend #5: Usability, accessibility and UX Needs to Improve

We are getting lost in web clutter, and so 2020 will be a time to organize your brand and tighten your message.

Here are some tips to simplify your website and bring focus to your message:

• Revise your content and stay current: If the post you once considered evergreen is no longer effective, don’t add new content — revise it. A strategically created URL can be sustainable and long lasting; don’t be afraid to freshen up the content so that it remains current and relevant.
• Streamline your website navigation: Good navigation is like good infrastructure: notable only when it is absent. When visiting your site, the user shouldn’t need to think about the navigation at all. Limit your navigation to five items.
• Make your website more accessible: An accessible website benefits people with and without disabilities, making your message more available and inclusive. Designing with WCAG 2.0 will make your site more usable for users. Your website should strategically use alt text images, headlines and friendly hyperlinks to increase the “volume” of your message.

Content Trend #6: Brands need to adopt an integrated marketing approach 

There’s still a fundamental mismatch between how brands are marketing their offerings compared to the way people actually want to be marketed to.

Outdated tactics are slowly fading, and brands need to adopt an integrated marketing strategy if they want any chance of standing out in the New Year.

Brands need to stop being so linear in their marketing approach and instead expand their content and their messaging to different channels if they truly want to achieve results.

For example, a couple of things you can do are:

• Start integrating multiple mediums to achieve maximum results. Try writing articles for PR, producing high-quality videos, distributing content organically on social media and using paid advertising to expand reach.
• Repurpose new and existing content to extend the shelf life. Try turning a high-quality video into a blog post, creating micro-videos to distribute on social media, or transcribing the video and creating tweets, etc.

The digital age is here to stay, and brands need to take advantage of these new marketing platforms and communication tools in order to stay relevant in 2020.

Content Trend #7: The future of creative design: It appears to be the future

Abstract 3D, ultra-minimalism, futuristic & asymmetric patterns, isometric illustration, futuristic illustration rooted in nostalgia will bring a renewed commitment to a type-only approach. I’m excited to see where the year goes with this particular trend. 

A note to young graphic designers, learn the ins-and-outs of typography, and you’ll rule the (design) world. 

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you with your content marketing strategy, send us an email at info@fifthstory.com.