Staying on top of the latest visual marketing design trends is essential for building an enduring brand, telling engaging stories, and emotionally connecting with customers. With that lofty objective in mind, here are a few of the top visual marketing trends that will continue to drive decision-making for marketers and designers.

2024 Visual Marketing Design Trends You Need to Know About

1. Nostalgia Marketing Visuals

Life in the 2020s can be pretty hectic, so it’s no surprise there’s an increasing craving for comfort and nostalgia in strategic visuals that resonate deeply with people. This trend is not merely about revisiting the past but fostering a sense of connection and reassurance amid change. Brands infuse memories and warmth into their present visuals to offer that comfort.

Vintage aesthetics and warm color palettes are more than just retro; they embody timelessness and authenticity, offering solace in the impersonal digital era. These elements, from soothing amber and sepia to earthy tones, create a comforting sense of familiarity, transforming the past into a welcoming home.

Familiar imagery acts as a bridge between the past and present, not solely for nostalgia’s sake but to communicate universality, durability, and trust. By weaving these images into their marketing, brands forge deeper emotional connections, ensuring their messages are not only seen but profoundly felt.

Example: Burger King Revives Its Iconic Logo

A few years have passed since Burger King revealed the retro redesign of its instantly recognizable logo, but in retrospect, the celebrated revival was on the leading edge of nostalgic visual marketing trends. Ditching the cartoonish logo and stylings used since the company’s 1999 rebrand, the new brand identity leans hard into the warm palettes and comforting aesthetics of a timeless past.

Image by Burger King

2. AI-Generated Imagery

As we venture further into the 21st century, the realms of artificial intelligence (AI) continue to expand, now revolutionizing how marketers create strategic visuals. The rise of AI-powered tools in the marketing sphere marks a significant shift, opening up a world where the creation of stunning, compelling imagery is not only faster but also more personalized and innovative than ever before.

AI-generated content transcends merely meeting the demand for new visuals; it revolutionizes creative production by quickly generating high-quality, detailed images. This shift reduces what once took hours to minutes without compromising quality, ensuring outputs meet or exceed expectations with precision.

Personalization is another benefit of AI, enabling content to be customized to individual preferences or demographics. This allows for visuals that deeply resonate with various audience segments, significantly enhancing engagement and fostering a closer connection to the brand.

Example: Coca-Cola Looks Ahead to the Year 3000

Coca-Cola has become a leading brand when it comes to leveraging the power of AI for their present and future visual marketing efforts. The company has not only used AI to create multiple iterations of classic Coke ad campaigns with the “Create Real Magic” platform, but it even launched a brand new soda called Y3000 that was created through collaboration between humans and AI.

Image by Coca-Cola

3. Human-Centered Design

Human-centered design prioritizes the user’s needs, experiences, and well-being above all else, ensuring that every visual marketing design decision is made with the end user in mind. It’s a philosophy that champions empathy, accessibility, and inclusivity, aiming to create strategic visual content that is both engaging and deeply resonant with a broad audience.

Human-centered design ensures visuals are aesthetically pleasing, navigable, and understandable for all, including those with differing abilities. This involves considerations like color contrast for visual impairments, text alternatives for images, and easy-to-navigate interactive elements for users with limited mobility.

Inclusivity broadens this approach, making sure visuals represent the diversity of the target audience, including various cultures, ethnicities, genders, ages, and body types. Embracing diversity in visuals helps brands build a sense of belonging and connection, showing appreciation and understanding of our diverse world.

Example: Airbnb Puts Customers at the Heart of the Story

Airbnb has long been a trailblazer when it comes to human-centric marketing. From a visual marketing design standpoint, the company’s website offers a simple, intuitive interface that allows people to find their perfect destination quickly. The real stars, however, are the high-quality photos that help visitors picture themselves in those destinations, which is why Airbnb provides every listing with access to a professional photographer rather than relying on user-generated photos.

Image by Airbnb

4. Maximalist Visual Marketing Design

Maximalism, a vibrant and bold trend, contrasts sharply with recent minimalist design philosophies, celebrating sensory richness and immersive experiences. It champions a vibrant, layered, and textured design approach, encouraging an embrace of abundance over restraint.

Characterized by vibrant colors, intricate patterns, and rich textures, maximalist design defies “less is more,” opting instead for statement-making chaos and complexity. This method aims to create lively, dynamic spaces and experiences bursting with personality.

In visual marketing, maximalism enables brands to capture attention in a crowded space, offering memorable and eye-catching content. It communicates luxury, creativity, and boldness, engaging consumers emotionally with its exuberant design.

Example: Pepsi Goes Big and Bold

When Pepsi made the decision to update its logo in 2023, the company eschewed minimalist trends in favor of a big, bold design that’s impossible to ignore. The new branding puts the company’s name front and center while also adopting a strong, all-caps typeface that’s impossible to ignore. As the first change to the company’s look in 14 years, it’s a strong shift that conveys Pepsi’s confidence in its future.

Image by Pepsi

5. Minimalism Design Aesthetic

Just because maximalism is growing in popularity doesn’t mean minimalism isn’t still going strong! Minimalist design focuses on clean lines, white space, and simplicity, offering a calming alternative to the complexity of maximalism.

More than an aesthetic choice, minimalism conveys a brand’s essence with precision and restraint. It emphasizes quality and value through careful selection and detail, ensuring every element has a purpose. By projecting confidence and thoughtfulness, this approach often resonates with consumers on a deeper level.

Minimalism brings calm and focus, with its clean aesthetics reducing cognitive overload and enhancing message clarity. This simplicity improves user experience, from website navigation to product interaction, making minimalism not just a design choice but a strategic one for clear, impactful communication.

Example: Western Union Opts for Standout Simplicity

Western Union may be one of the oldest companies around, but its new branding is anything but stale. Casting aside the busy, often cluttered aesthetic of its previous logos, the company debuted a clean, simple design in 2023 that’s both familiar and strikingly fresh. The versatile branding accomplishes the daunting task of making an over-170-year-old company feel vibrant and relevant for customers of all ages.

Image by Western Union

Staying abreast of visual marketing design trends is no longer optional for today’s marketers. The digital landscape is constantly evolving to shape consumer perceptions and preferences, so understanding and integrating these changes into content is essential for building strategies that grab and hold the viewer’s attention. By keeping a pulse on the latest visual marketing trends, marketers can craft campaigns that forge deeper connections with their audience, ensuring their messages are not just seen but truly felt.

Ask The Content Strategist: FAQs about visual marketing design trends

Q: How do I effectively track and adapt to rapidly changing visual marketing trends to ensure my content remains fresh and engaging?

You can stay current with visual trends by consistently monitoring design publications, social media, and industry leaders, and by using analytics to gauge audience engagement with different visual styles.

Q: What are the specific challenges or pitfalls I might face when trying to incorporate AI-generated imagery into campaigns, and how should they be addressed?

The main challenges include ensuring AI-generated imagery aligns with your brand identity and navigating ethical concerns around authenticity. You can address these issues through clear brand guidelines and transparency with audiences.

Q: Regarding human-centered design, how do I measure the effectiveness of promoting accessibility and inclusivity within my marketing visuals?

You can assess the impact of human-centered design by soliciting feedback from users with diverse needs and analyzing engagement metrics to see how accessibility improvements affect user experience.

Q: If I’m interested in adopting a maximalist design strategy, what considerations should I keep in mind to ensure my marketing visuals are impactful without being overwhelming?

When embracing maximalism, you should always make sure your design maintains a cohesive narrative and balances boldness with clarity to avoid overwhelming your audience.

Q: With the continued relevance of minimalism alongside the rise of maximalism, how can I decide which approach best aligns with my brand’s identity and audience preferences?

You should consider your brand’s core values and audience demographics when choosing between minimalism and maximalism. If the answer isn’t immediately clear, you can leverage A/B testing to determine which approach resonates more effectively.

Subscribe to The Content Strategist newsletter to find out how successful marketers are leveraging the latest visual trends in their campaigns and their future visual marketing plans.

The post Top 5 Visual Marketing Design Trends Shaping Marketing Strategies appeared first on Contently.

It’s not that content marketers aren’t interested in tech. We are! It does mean, however, that leaders are wary of spending right now. Contributors include the tepid economic expectations this year, coupled with the fact that marketers aren’t using the lion’s share of the martech capabilities they already have. The result is C-suites are continuing to ask marketers to do more with less, a trend we also saw last year.

What does that mean for the hot technologies in marketing right now? A year ago, we reported on our own survey findings showing the ways in which content technology investments mirror our functions’ biggest challenges.

Research from third-party sources for this year shows many of the same tech trends that make us more efficient and more impactful. Unsurprisingly, it all starts with AI.

Generative AI really is affecting content marketing trends!

There is a predictable pattern in technology — a hot new technology grabs everyone’s attention and attracts major investment, only to be followed by a period of disappointment after it fails to produce immediate returns. In the case of generative AI, however, the pattern looks different.

Two years after the release of generative AI, marketing leaders are still excited about its promise and payoff. A survey from Boston Consulting Group finds that 70% of marketing functions already use it. McKinsey estimates that the economic benefits of adopting generative AI could result in between $6.1 to $7.9 trillion in value.

According to multiple surveys, AI is already enabling content marketing teams to produce more content faster and with greater accuracy. Given the fact that creating enough content to meet demand is among content marketing’s top challenges, generative AI’s biggest benefit, regardless of content type, is helping us to keep up with growing expectations. It is not replacing human talent. Nor is investment slowing down. On the contrary, casual experiments are giving way to more formal adoption.

Content marketing teams need customer data to optimize impact

AI’s extended reach is creating an opportunity for marketers to up their customer data game. After all, AI runs on data. In addition, parallel trends related to data privacy and the ongoing retirement of third-party cookies make it clear that businesses need more maturity in customer data and analytics.

Thankfully, one of the benefits of higher-quality data programs is that content marketers can do even better. By “better,” I mean produce more targeted content that results in higher customer engagement.

Customer data will result in better AI-generated content

Most marketing functions adopting generative AI so far have used off-the-shelf solutions. Even as content marketing teams are embedding those tools into their workflows, the most tech-forward organizations are building their own large language models using their own data (LLMs are the foundation on which gen AI platforms operate).

Not every organization has the resources to build its own model. Yet organizations can still augment standard models with in-house data for better outputs that require less manual fact-checking or style refinements.

Customer data drives better content marketing engagement

Beyond improving generative AI outputs, data maturity will also enable content marketers to more effectively use predictive analytics and machine learning to uncover insights into customer needs.

A perennial challenge for content marketers is emphasizing the right content to drive impact. One of the primary ways we have to stay ahead of copycat content is to write about what our customers want to know.

We may find that out by collecting and analyzing direct and indirect sources of customer data. Direct methods include surveys, voice of the customer programs, focus groups, and others. Indirect methods include channel tracking and social listening.

Interest in customer data is not new, but it continues to rise as a critical technology-driven content marketing trend because content teams still struggle so much to use it. For example, your organization may house the data you have in disparate systems. Or, relevant sources of data may belong to other functions that don’t want to or know how to share them with you.

For those reasons and others, businesses have increased investment in customer data platforms (CDPs) to centralize data and gain a single view of the customer to drive marketing practices.

Future tech will enable more efficient creation

Even with generative AI on their side and better data informing their work, content teams will need to up their game with sound processes and an easy-to-use technology stack. So, even as you embrace the hot technologies of the year, don’t forget to leverage your content marketing platform to get the most out of what you do to drive collaboration and streamline workflows.

Ask the Content Strategist: FAQs

How are marketing budgets expected to change in the next few years?

Sources like the semi-annual CMO Survey predict that if economic conditions improve, marketing budgets will gradually increase. In the meantime, content teams only increase their relevance by optimizing how they work and showing positive returns from current investments — including in your content marketing.

What are the potential drawbacks of relying heavily on generative AI for content creation?

One potential drawback of using AI for content is creating high volumes of low-quality content that includes misinformation. To avoid this risk, make sure to keep a human involved in the content creation process, and implement strong fact-checking practices as part of your content processes.

How can I leverage data to improve content marketing?

Leveraging data is not just about knowing your customer (though that is critical). It is also about knowing what is working in your content marketing program and what you need to stop doing to get the most out of your budget. That requires you to continue to leverage data to understand your audience, while also tracking content performance to identify opportunities for amplification.

To stay on top of B2C and B2B content marketing trends as they happen, subscribe to The Content Strategist and follow us on Instagram.

The post Tech Advances That Are Impacting Content Marketing Trends appeared first on Contently.

Many companies in marketing, media, or communications rely on freelance contributors, yet brands don’t always know how to effectively integrate these new teammates.

Whether you’re looking to find new freelancers or already have external contributors helping out, you’ll benefit from a freelance onboarding process. Providing freelancers the right resources from the beginning will help them create better work and ultimately make your job easier.

How to ace freelancer onboarding

To help you along the way, we’ve compiled a six-step freelancer onboarding checklist, a cheat sheet of sorts that you can use to onboard freelancers now and into the future.

1. Explain the company and business objectives

Full-time employees have a tendency to take company messaging for granted. They’re around it so often that it becomes second nature. When you work with freelancers, you can’t assume they’ll instantly know the nuances of your business. The first part of your freelancer onboarding process should focus on educating them on these core details.

Marketers typically think about lobbing their pitch at prospective clients, but the same exercise could help you onboard freelancers. To create and maintain a productive relationship, you need to be clear about what the company sells, who it wants to reach, and how it wants to accomplish its business goals.

You can repurpose existing HR content—brand videos, welcome packets, training quizzes, FAQs—to get freelancers thinking the way you do. But keep in mind that you should pay freelancers for this time.

2. Introduce the team

Be thoughtful about how you introduce freelancers to full-timers. Just because they won’t physically be in the office doesn’t mean you should rattle off names of people on a group email. If you anticipate freelancers working repeatedly with full-timers, set up brief one-on-one calls between those individuals as part of the freelancer onboarding process. If you have a content management platform like Contently, make sure they know how to use it.

3. Set rules for communication

Before you hire and onboard freelancers, decide on a system that includes how you’re going to communicate with them.

One option is to divide your freelancer team into tiers. I’m on several editors’ email lists where they blast out editorial calendars, but others message me directly to ask about my availability. A couple simply forward me press releases and offers for interviews, and I can choose whether to bite or not.

Of course, there’s also the question of instant messaging and communicating with your full-time creators. In some cases, brands give full Slack privileges to freelancers. In other cases, the part-time creators are confined to certain channels. Either way, I’ve seen enough evidence to know that it’s helpful when freelancers join company culture. They pick up on brand messaging faster if they can see internal discussions.

4. Style guide and pitch guide

What’s your stance on the Oxford comma? Are there any words or phrases that employees can’t use? Do visual assets need to include certain colors, or are there any off-limits shots a freelance photographer should know about? Sending a style guide to freelancers will give them answers to all the little creative questions that you already know in the back of your head. As your brand evolves, you should also update the style guide occasionally, answering any new inquiries received from freelancers as they go through their onboarding process.

Along with the style guide, you should also send your freelancers a pitch or brief guide, which can live as a PDF, Powerpoint deck, or Google doc. Format doesn’t matter as much as content. A freelancer can’t pitch you ideas effectively without knowing at a high-level what you’re looking for. Do you want to approve their intended sources ahead of time? Should the pitch be in narrative format or are bullet points okay? Do you want pitches delivered to you the same day each week, via email, or do you accept them on a rolling basis?

Tell them exactly how you prefer to be pitched, including the communication channel they should use and the structure their pitches should take.

5. Gather a portfolio of past success

There are a ton of reasons to file your biggest successes together, but onboarding freelancers is one of the biggest. If you tell 10 new freelance hires to “read the archives,” expect maybe two or three to walk away with the same vision you have in your head.

On the other hand, if you have a directory of standout articles, infographics, white papers, and case studies to choose from, they’ll have an easier time seeing things your way. If, for instance, you’re asking them to write a new version of a piece of content that always works for you, show them the original! Tell them why it worked, what you’d like them to repurpose, and where you’d like them to add in new material.

6. Ask for feedback

Routinely interview your freelancers the way you interview your clients and seek feedback from full-timers. If you’ve been working with a freelancer for a few months, ask them to reflect on the freelancer onboarding process. Did they understand the brand when they began? What do they know now that they wish you had told them back then?

Once you have the answers to some of those questions, make sure to update your internal freelancer onboarding checklist to address any adjustments you’ve made to the process. The goal here is to internalize feedback and adjust your system to better serve freelancers who join in the future.

The better you are at freelancer onboarding, the faster your team will benefit from their contributions.

To learn more ways to improve your working relationships with creatives, subscribe to The Content Strategist.

The post How A Checklist Can Improve Your Freelancer Onboarding Process appeared first on Contently.

This means you need to be intentional and attract the right traffic to your website—and to do that, you have to create content that actually shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs). But this is becoming more challenging today, with the rise of AI-powered search and zero-click results. The SEO landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, and it’s an adapt-or-die moment for many content creators.

To stay ahead of the curve, it helps to know a bit about the technology underpinning these latest developments, such as NLP SEO. Below, we explore the nuances of natural language processing (NLP)—one of the core technologies driving the evolution of search engines and content discovery—and how NLP and SEO work together.

What is Natural Language Processing? Let’s Review the Basics

NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that converts written and spoken words (“unstructured data”) into structured material a machine can interpret. NLP platforms analyze massive volumes of words and phrases to find meaning, patterns, and context. NLP is more prevalent than you might realize—Alexa, Siri, and Google voice assistants all leverage it.

NLP is also one of the core technologies used in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT—though it’s just one part of the sophisticated algorithms that make up these multimodal foundation models. (“Multimodal” meaning they process more than just text; the latest iterations of today’s popular LLMs also understand and generate video, voice, and images.)

As NLP evolves and becomes more sophisticated, experts predict the market will reach $453.3 billion by 2032.

What Is NLP in SEO, and How Does It Drive Google Search Algorithms?

NLP is also a component of Gemini, the umbrella name for Google’s family of AI models. Gemini leverages NLP to enhance its understanding and generation of human language. By integrating NLP, Google aims to provide more accurate and contextually relevant search results, support complex conversational interactions, and improve user experiences across its various suite of services.

More generally, a few ways NLP impacts search include:

• Semantic understanding: NLP helps search engines comprehend the meaning behind words—not just match keywords.
• Voice search integration: As voice-activated search becomes more popular, NLP is crucial for interpreting spoken queries, which are typically more conversational and less formulaic than written language.
• Sentiment detection: NLP can help assess the sentiment of online content, allowing search engines to better evaluate the tone and relevance of a page.
• Zero-click searches: Advancements in NLP SEO have led to a rise in zero-click searches, where users get their answers directly on the search results page without clicking through to a website—a phenomenon we’re seeing in Google’s (admittedly imperfect) AI Overviews.

Building an NLP SEO Strategy

The roll-out of AI Overviews means that Google now provides direct answers, featured snippets, or knowledge panels in response to user queries. This trend challenges content creators to optimize not just for clicks, but also for visibility in these prominent search features. Some strategies include structuring content to directly answer common questions, using schema markup to help search engines understand your content, and creating comprehensive, authoritative pieces that search engines are likely to pull information from.

To build an effective SEO strategy that takes NLP into account, consider these seven techniques.

1. Focus on search intent, not just keywords.

Google’s latest algorithm updates mean SEO-optimized content isn’t just about keywords anymore. It’s also about search intent—the “why” behind a user’s query.

Using NLP, Google categorizes search queries into four categories—navigational, transactional, promotional, and commercial. This information helps Google provide results that meet user expectations.

To get a better sense of search intent for a given query, you can conduct a Google search for a keyword and see what ranks on Page 1 or appears in the Featured Snippets/AI Overviews.

2. Align your SEO strategy with audience research.

Conduct thorough SEO research before publishing content, and handpick a small set of keyword clusters to focus on. Remember: the goal is to develop comprehensive, focused content that offers value to readers—not simply to cover a trending topic.

You can leverage a range of audience research strategies: hosting surveys, scouring customer reviews, using AI sentiment-analysis tools, and conducting customer interviews are all good starting points. Internal subject matter experts at your organization can also be strong sources of insight into your audience and what they want to know.

3. Display expertise.

Today, Google can (supposedly) recognize if content simply summarizes what other sites have already published without adding original value. Doing this can negatively impact your rankings.

Google advises content creators to prioritize content demonstrating a “depth of knowledge” and firsthand expertise.

4. Prioritize quality over quantity with SEO content.

If a website is creating a ton of low-quality content on different topics, Google may categorize it as “unhelpful,” leading to lower rankings.

To prevent negative rankings, publish content that offers expertise on a targeted, audience-driven list of topics. These days, when it comes to SEO, a do-it-all strategy can actually hurt, rather than help, your organic search rankings.

5. Don’t rely on AI alone.

According to Google, using “extensive automation” to produce content on various topics can damage your rankings. On X, Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, wrote, “It’s unlikely some AI content is going to feel written by people without some degree of human review.”

Use AI as a tool to supplement your efforts. But don’t depend on it for solo content creation.

6. Integrate tools into your MarTech stack that influence NLP.

To build a MarTech stack that effectively leverages NLP and improves your content, use tools and technologies that can feed data to an NLP—like Semrush, Hubspot, and Salesforce, to name a few.

These tools can integrate with NLP tools like Amazon Comprehend, Google Cloud NLP API, and IBM Watson. Other AI-powered tools that integrate GPT-3, like Jasper.ai, can help you create content, but there are certain ethical guidelines you should keep in mind, including the need for thorough fact-checking.

7. Conduct an SEO audit.

According to Google, any content (regardless of value or quality) that originates from a website with a lot of “unhelpful” content overall is less likely to perform well in organic search rankings. Removing unhelpful content from your site can improve the rankings of other content.

Getting Started with NLP in Content Marketing

Ask the Content Strategist: FAQs about NLP and SEO

How does NLP affect local SEO and geographically targeted content?

NLP can be a game-changer for local SEO. It helps search engines better understand location-specific language and context, making it easier to serve relevant local results. This means businesses need to focus on natural, conversational content that includes local landmarks, colloquialisms, and regionally specific information to really nail local SEO.

What are the potential privacy concerns or ethical considerations related to the use of advanced NLP in search engines?

The big concern with advanced NLP in search is the potential for increased data collection and analysis of user queries. While the technology can lead to better search results, it also raises questions about user privacy and data protection. There’s also the ethical consideration of potential bias in NLP algorithms, which could unfairly influence search results and the information people see.

How can small businesses or websites with limited resources effectively compete in an NLP SEO landscape?

Small businesses can still compete in an NLP-driven landscape by focusing on quality over quantity. Create content that genuinely answers your audience’s questions and showcases your expertise—NLP algorithms love that stuff. Don’t be afraid to get specific and local; sometimes, a well-optimized niche can outperform bigger competitors with generic content.

Sign up for The Content Strategist newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest trends in content marketing like NLP optimization in SEO.

The post NLP SEO: What Is Natural Language Processing and Why It Matters for SEO appeared first on Contently.

This has massive implications for our culture and society. It means we must prioritize AI ethics in a way we never have before. Which forces us to ask the question: What are some ethical considerations when using generative AI?

Consider some of the following questions while pondering this:

• Who owns the copyright to AI-generated content?
• How will we judge human creation vs. machine creation?
• Who monitors the output of generative AI?
• What ethical standards should be present to ensure responsible content creation?
• How will we keep machines accountable for what they produce?

Why does AI ethics matter?

AI is increasingly involved in making the decisions that affect our everyday lives, such as whether we’re approved for a loan or which ads we see online. These outputs significantly impact our well-being and how we perceive the world. That’s why robust ethical principles are necessary to guide AI development and implementation. When AI applications improve fairness, equity, and privacy in society, they can be an extremely useful and productive cornerstone. However, if it’s used maliciously, it could be detrimental. AI’s output also must be generated responsibly.

For example, using generative AI content to produce articles or videos could allow bad actors, authoritarians, and even governments to sow division. As we’ve seen with elections and social media, this division causes damage to society and social values.

Social algorithms creating polarization is just one ethical concern about the proliferation of AI. The stakes are high. Ethical standards for the use of AI will be crucial for monitoring output and evaluating if the content it generates is accurate and reliable.

Additionally, commercial interests often drive the creation of AI. There’s a real risk that AI will be developed primarily to maximize profits rather than benefit humanity. This, again, raises a red flag. We must consider the ethics of generative AI’s implementation as it advances.

How can we approach the ethics of generative AI?

The ethical implications of AI can be addressed in several ways. One approach is through policies and regulations that govern the use of AI and integrate them into the legal and regulatory system.

Another method encourages companies and individuals to adopt ethical principles voluntarily for generative AI content creation and use.

So how is AI being governed?

• The US government released an AI Bill of Rights that focuses on its development and implementation principles. These principles guide agencies in using AI and ensure that AI is developed and used responsibly.
• The United Nations has also issued a set of principles for the development and use of AI, which is intended to promote the responsible development and use of AI and focus on human rights.
• The European Union has issued several documents on AI, including ethical guidelines for trustworthy AI. These guidelines are intended to ensure that AI is developed and used in a way that is ethically sound and respects fundamental rights.

In addition to world governments, several non-profit organizations are working to promote the responsible development and use of AI to mitigate its risks:

• The Partnership on Artificial Intelligence is a non-profit organization bringing together companies, academics, and other experts to discuss the ethical implications of AI and to create best practices for its development and use.
• The Center for Democracy & Technology is a non-profit organization promoting the responsible use of technology, including generative AI.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit organization that works to protect civil liberties in the digital world, including the rights of people affected by AI.

What guidelines signify responsible generative AI content creation?

When using generative AI content, it’s essential to know your actions’ potential implications and consequences. You need a code of ethics to guide your behavior as an individual and an organization. Consider the following:

1. What are the possible risks and implications of creating content with generative AI?
2. How might your content be misused or misinterpreted?
3. What could the potential negative impacts be on individuals or groups of people?
4. Are there any risks to public safety that need to be considered?

These questions are paramount to the use of generative AI content. Anything you create should be ethically sound and responsible for you, your company, and those who consume it. When organizations abide by ethical guidelines, they minimize negative impacts derived from generative AI.

How can content marketers uphold AI ethics and use generative AI responsibly?

Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize content marketing, but several ethical considerations must be addressed. In addition to being aware of the potential implications of the content, it’s also essential to follow a set of best practices when using generative AI in content marketing.

1. Define goals and objectives.

Clearly define the goals and objectives of your content marketing campaign before using generative AI. Create a brief for your content campaign that includes your goals, key pillars, topics to be covered, personas, keywords, and tone of voice. This will help you get the most out of your generative AI content production. The better your brief, the better the output.

2. Establish guidelines.

Create rules or guidelines that will be used in generative AI production. Add a section on generative AI to your content style guide. Make it ethical. Provide do’s and don’ts. Add advice on how to make the output more successful, what differences might occur between briefs based on content type, and what to evaluate once the product has been delivered. Make sure to include an editorial step that requires your team to search for data and respected publications that validate your key points.

3. Establish a robust fact-checking process.

“Hallucinations” represent one of the emerging risks of using generative AI to draft text-based content such as emails, blog posts, and social messages. These factual-sounding statements are a common problem with generative AI. When the inaccuracy is obvious, content creators can quickly identify and edit it out. But it is not always that easy.

Generative AI is already producing text with falsely attributed quotes, invented data, and supposed “findings” that sound plausible but aren’t connected to real research. Organizations need fact-checkers with a keen eye and robust checking processes to suss out misinformation and remove it from AI-generated content before it damages your brand.

4. Monitor regularly.

Regularly monitor the generative AI content created to ensure that it meets your standards and objectives. Sometimes an editorial process won’t be enough. Maybe one piece fits your goals after editing, but it’s not creating a holistic narrative with the rest of your content. Make sure all parts fit the ethical standards you’ve set individually and collectively in your marketing campaigns.

By following these best practices, you can help ensure that using generative AI in content marketing is safe, responsible, and effective. Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize content marketing, but several ethical considerations need to be taken into account before we outpace ourselves in innovation.

Stay up-to-date on what’s trending in content marketing. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest articles today!

The post The Ethics of Generative AI and Responsible Content Creation appeared first on Contently.

The end result was… mediocre. The AI could surface articles that were similar to ones the audience had engaged with in the past, but we couldn’t make it smart — which is another way of saying we couldn’t teach it to recognize the ineffable nature of a fresh idea or a dynamic way of talking about it.

Ultimately, my client pulled the plug on the AI project and eventually on the newsletter itself. But I’ve been thinking about that experience as large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4o by OpenAI continue to gain broader mainstream attention.

I wonder if we would have been more successful today using an API into GPT-4o to identify “good” articles.

GPT-4 underpins content AI solutions like ChatGPT and Jasper.ai, which have an impressive ability to understand language prompts and craft cogent text at lightning speed on almost any topic. But there is a negative side to content AI: the clever content they produce can feel generic and they often make stuff up. Impressive as they are in terms of speed and fluency, the large language models today don’t think or understand the way humans do.

But what if they did? What if AI developers solved the current limitations of content AI? Or, put another way, what if content AI was actually smart? Let’s walk through a few ways in which they are already getting smarter and how content professionals can use these content AI advances to their advantage.

5 ways content AI is getting smarter

To understand why content AI isn’t truly smart and how it’s getting smarter, it helps to recap how large language models work. GPT-4 and “transformer models” like Gemini by Google, Claude by Anthropic, or Llama by Meta are deep learning neural networks that simultaneously evaluate all of the data (i.e., words) in a sequence (i.e., sentence) and the relationships between them.

To train them, the AI developers used web content, which provided far more training data with more parameters than before, enabling more fluent outputs for a broader set of applications. Transformers don’t understand those words, however, or what they refer to in the world. The models can simply see how they are often ordered in sentences and the syntactic relationship between them.

As a consequence, generative AI works today by predicting the next words in a sequence based on millions of similar sentences it has seen before. This is one reason why “hallucinations” — or made-up information — as well as misinformation are so common with large language models. These tools are simply creating sentences that look like other sentences they have seen in their training data. Inaccuracies, irrelevant information, debunked facts, false equivalencies — all of it — will show up in generated language if it exists in the training language. Many AI experts even think hallucinations are inevitable.

And yet, you can mitigate them. In fact, today’s large language models hallucinate less often than their predecessors, as shown in this inventive hallucination “leader board.” In addition, both data scientists and users have several solutions for reducing them.

Solution #1: AI Content prompting

Anyone who has tried an AI app is familiar with prompting. Basically, you tell the tool what you want to write and sometimes how you want to write it. There are simple prompts, such as, “List the advantage of using AI to write blog posts.”

Prompts can also be more sophisticated. For example, you can input a sample paragraph or page of text written according to your firm’s rules and voice and prompt the content AI to generate subject lines or social copy or a new paragraph in the same voice and using the same style.

Prompts are a first-line method for setting rules that narrow the output from content AI. Keeping your prompts focused, direct, and specific limits the chances that the AI will generate off-brand and misinformed copy.

Organizations are also experimenting with a form of prompt engineering called retrieval augmented generation, or RAG. With RAG-enhanced prompts, users point the model to fulfill the prompt using a specific source of information, often one that is not part of the original training set.

RAG does not 100% prevent hallucinations, but it can help content experts catch inaccuracies because they know what content the AI used to come up with an answer.

For more guidance on prompting techniques, check out this piece for content marketers on writing AI prompts, or read about researcher Lance Elliot’s nine rules for composing prompts to limit hallucinations.

Solution #2: “Chain of thought” prompting

Consider how you would solve a math problem or give someone directions in an unfamiliar city with no street signs. You would probably break down the problem into multiple steps and solve for each, leveraging deductive reasoning to find your way to the answer.

Chain of thought prompting leverages a similar process of breaking down a reasoning problem into multiple steps. The goal is to prime the LLM to produce text that reflects something resembling a reasoning or common-sense thinking process.

Scientists have used chain of thought techniques to improve LLM performance on math problems as well as on more complex tasks, such as inference — which humans automatically do based on their contextual understanding of language. Experiments show that with chain of thought prompts, users can produce more accurate results from LLMs.

Some researchers are even working to create add-ons to LLMs with pre-written prompts and chain-of-thought prompts so that the average user doesn’t need to learn how to do them.

Solution #3: Fine-tuning content AI

Fine-tuning involves taking a pre-trained large language model and training it to fulfill a specific task in a specific field by exposing it to relevant data for that field and eliminating irrelevant data.

A fine-tuned data language model ideally has all the language recognition and generative fluency of the original but focuses on a more specific context for better results.

There are hundreds of examples of fine-tuning for tasks like legal writing, financial reports, tax information, and so on. By fine-tuning a model using writings on legal cases or tax returns and correcting inaccuracies in generated results, an organization can develop a new tool that can draft clever content with fewer hallucinations.

If it seems implausible that these government-driven or regulated fields would use such untested technology, consider the case of a Colombian judge who reportedly used ChatGPT to draft his decision brief (without fine-turning).

Solution #4: Specialized model development

Many view fine-tuning a pre-trained model as a faster and less expensive approach compared with building new models. It’s not the only way, though. With enough budget, researchers and technology providers can also leverage the techniques of transformer models to develop specialized language models for specific domains or tasks.

For example, a group of researchers working at the University of Florida and in partnership with Nvidia, an AI technology provider, developed a specialized health-focused large language model to evaluate and analyze language data in the electronic health records used by hospitals and clinical practices.

The result was GatorTron, reportedly the largest-known LLM designed to evaluate the content in clinical records. The team has already developed a related model based on synthetic data, which alleviates privacy worries from using AI content based on personal medical records.

A recent experiment using the model to produce doctor’s notes resulted in AI-generated content that human readers could not identify as such 50% of the time.

Solution #5: Add-on functionality

Generating content is often part of a larger workflow within the business. Instead of stopping with the content, some developers are adding functionality on top of the content for greater value-add.

For example, researchers are trying to develop prompting add-ons so that everyday users don’t have to learn how to prompt well.

That’s just one example. Another comes from Jasper, whose Jasper for Business enhancements are a clear bid for enterprise-level contracts. These include a user interface that lets users define and apply their organization’s “brand voice” to all the copy they create. Jasper has also developed bots that allow users to use Jasper inside enterprise applications that require text.

Another solution provider called ABtesting.ai layers web A/B testing capabilities on top of language generation to test different variants of web copy and CTAs to identify the highest performer.

Next steps for leveraging content AI

The techniques I’ve described so far are enhancements or workarounds of the foundational models. As the world of AI continues to evolve and innovate, however, researchers will build AI with abilities closer to real thinking and reasoning.

The Holy Grail of “artificial generation intelligence” (AGI) — a kind of meta-AI that can fulfill a variety of different computational tasks — is still alive and well. Others are exploring ways to enable AI to engage in abstraction and analogy.

The message for humans whose life and passion is good content creation: AI is going to keep getting smarter. But we can “get smarter,” too.

I don’t mean that human creators try to beat an AI at the kind of tasks that require massive computing power. But for the time being, the AI needs prompts and inputs. Think of those as the core ideas about what to write. And even when a content AI surfaces something new and original, it still needs humans who recognize its value and elevate it as a priority. In other words, innovation and imagination remain firmly in human hands. The more time we spend using those skills, the wider our lead.

Learn more about content strategy every week. Subscribe to The Content Strategist newsletter for more articles like this sent directly to your inbox.

The post What if Content AI Was Actually Smart? appeared first on Contently.

The problem is, this little love affair can lead to navel-gazing—and irrelevant content.

Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Blockchain. Overflowing with buzzwords, B2B tech marketing content is far too often focused on the technical features and capabilities of the products. Don’t get me wrong—decision-makers and internal influencers, particularly technical buyers, do want to know about the functional aspects. Ultimately, they care less about all your bells and whistles and more about solving their pain points.

Your B2B tech marketing content needs to stop trying to sell widgets and instead sell outcomes and solutions to problems. Here are some ideas for how to achieve this.

Delivering true value

Most successful marketers attribute the success of their content strategy to the value it provides. That’s according to two separate surveys by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs—one surveying technology marketers and the other polling B2B marketers.

However, what you perceive as value may be different from how buyers see it. The biggest B2B content marketing mistake is “the classic features versus the benefits debate,” says B2B technology writer and content strategist Jennifer Roland Cadiente who written for brands such as Samsung Business and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

“Technology creators often use the features as their benchmarks to ensure that the product will do what it needs to do, which is critical in production and testing,” she explains. “But when you’ve moved out of production and into marketing, you need to go deeper to explain how those cool new features will translate into the benefits the user will experience.”

Every piece of content should tie back to the customers’ goals. For example, are you launching new product features? Then resist the urge to wax poetic about the “innovation” that went into developing them and how you’ve answered the market’s challenges. Your audience doesn’t need this “look at us” introspection. Instead, connect the dots between those features and the customers’ desired outcomes.

In other words, your B2B tech marketing content should answer one fundamental question for your customers or prospects every time: What’s in it for them? How does your tech solve their specific problem or need?

Creating relatable messaging

Content marketing has been a crowded field for some time, but the shift to more digital marketing due to the pandemic gave new meaning to the content deluge. So it’s no wonder that 51 percent of the marketers in the CMI/MarketingProfs’ B2B survey said it’s become “increasingly difficult to capture audiences’ attention” in the past year.

The overabundance of content has made the B2B decision-makers’ job harder. But they don’t just have to wade through more—they’re also getting less value overall. For example, when it comes to thought leadership, 71 percent of decision-makers surveyed last year by Edelman said that less than half of the content they consumed provided valuable insights.

Part of the problem is that you’re trying to do too much with your B2B tech marketing campaign—like reaching two or more different sets of audiences. Lack of clarity about the audience is one of the biggest mistakes B2B tech companies make, says Word Wow Studio’s Cynthia Kenworthy, a technology writer whose clients have included brands like Smartsheet and Oracle Netsuite.

“The interests of a C-suite executive are very different from an IT decision-maker or a developer,” she says. “It’s very difficult to speak credibly to multiple distinct audiences at once.”

She sees many brands focusing their content on what they want to say rather than what the audience wants to know. “To command the attention of the customer or prospect, every dimension of the content needs to be relevant—the technical detail, terminology, use cases, business outcomes, etc.,” she says. “Start by articulating the specific customer persona the content will target and their priorities.”

And remember that B2B buyers are humans. Even though your technology targets an enterprise or another entity, it’s easy to forget that it’s people you have to convince. The most important ingredient for B2B tech marketing is humanity, Cadiente notes.

“Technology has advanced our ability to perform many tasks, but it’s not the end in and of itself,” she says. “To really communicate the power of technology, we need to look at the effects it has on humans—how it makes our jobs easier, allows us to get more done in a day, or lets us focus on the things we love.”

Take a page from fictional advertising genius Don Draper of “Mad Men.” During one of his many mic-dropping customer pitches, Draper said: “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. What is happiness? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is OK. You are OK.”

Draper was explaining to Lucky Strikes executives how to differentiate their cigarettes from five other competitors. B2B tech marketing may not be based on happiness, but you need to distinguish yourself from a sea of competitors (chances are, a lot more than five). Among the most successful marketers, 78 percent already do it compared to only 32 percent among the least successful ones, according to the B2B marketing survey by CMI/MarketingProfs.

The bottom line?

Communicate the benefits of your solution to the customers and how it solves their problems—preferably in clear but unique ways.

Does that mean you shouldn’t highlight all those features you’ve come to love in your products? Of course not. However, don’t forget to connect the functional components to expected customer outcomes.

Learn how to relate to your customers’ challenges, and you’ll quickly understand how to convert any B2B tech marketing content from introspective to customer-centric. When you know you’re no longer simply marketing technology—you’re offering to deliver results.

The post Focusing Your B2B Tech Marketing on Outcomes and Solutions appeared first on Contently.

In our visually-driven digital age, where your audience’s attention span is fleeting at best, the importance of visual content cannot be overstated. Before we dive into ways you can use visual content and how Contently can help elevate your visual storytelling, let’s begin by exploring the fundamentals.

Importance of Visual Content and the Psychology Behind Visual Perception

Visual content—from graphics to videos—plays a vital role in storytelling and emotion. Our brains are wired to process these visuals quickly, with research suggesting images take as little as 13 milliseconds to be understood. This fast processing power highlights the importance of integrating visual elements effectively in our communications. Here are a few key psychological principles behind visual perception:

• Visual Memory: People tend to identify and remember visuals better than text. It’s estimated that after three days, a person can recall about 65% of visual content compared to just 10% of text.
• Emotional Impact: Visuals have a unique ability to evoke emotions. They can make us laugh, cry, or feel inspired, often more effectively than words alone.
• Storytelling: Visuals can tell a story instantly. A single image can convey a message without the need for lengthy explanations.
• Attention-Grabbing: Visuals naturally draw our attention. They’re the first thing we notice when we visit a website or scroll through social media.

Understanding these psychological aspects of visual content is crucial for content marketers. It provides the foundation upon which compelling visual storytelling is built.

Visual Content Creation Examples

Exploring the various forms of visual content can reveal powerful ways to engage your audience. Here, we’ll cover the most common types of visuals used by content marketers, plus visual storytelling examples.

Photos: Capturing Moments in Time

Photos are like windows into the past. They freeze moments, allowing your audience to connect with the emotions and experiences captured in the frame. Whether it’s a candid shot of your team in action or a stunning product photo, images have the power to convey authenticity and build trust.

Dove often uses photos to illustrate campaign concepts and drive its mission to redefine beauty standards. For its #TurnYourBack campaign, the company raised awareness of the damage that popular social media filters can cause, specifically targeting TikTok’s Bold Glamour filter. Although the images are simple, they are powerful examples of how brands can drive deeper connections while championing a cause.

Graphics: Simplifying Complexity

Graphics often include charts, graphs, and data visualizations. They transform data into visual stories that are easy for your audience to interact with. Graphics are excellent for simplifying complex information and making it more digestible, cutting through the noise and providing clarity.

Every year, Spotify releases a personalized recap for customers with its Spotify Wrapped campaign. They use bright colors and eye-catching graphics to convey each user’s music journey into a fun—and highly shareable—data story.

Videos: Practicing Dynamic Storytelling

Videos are perhaps the most dynamic form of visual content. They combine moving images with sound, creating a multisensory experience for your audience. From short, impactful social media clips to in-depth documentaries, videos are versatile tools for storytelling.

Italian energy company, Eni, relied on Contently’s versatile platform to bring their vision to life with the Powering Mozambique documentary. Through Contently, Eni seamlessly managed the entire creative process, from ideation to distribution, ensuring their narrative resonated with precision. This captivating documentary not only captured the hearts of viewers but also exemplified the potential of visual storytelling to inspire change and foster a deeper connection with audiences.

Illustrations: Adding Artistry to Your Brand

Illustrations are hand-drawn or digitally created images that can add a unique and artistic touch to your content. They’re versatile and can be tailored to your brand’s style.

Illustrations bring a touch of artistry to your content. They can be whimsical, serious, or anywhere in between, depending on your brand’s personality. Custom illustrations also offer the advantage of being unique to your brand, making your content instantly recognizable.

Salesforce has developed a distinctive illustration style that makes its branding instantly recognizable. Whether used in combination with photography or as stand-alone elements, their illustrations also include a cast of characters and mascots that represent different aspects of the brand.

Memes: Injecting Humor and Virality

Memes are a unique breed of visual content. They’re often humorous and have the potential to go viral, spreading your message far and wide. While not suitable for every brand, memes can be a playful addition to your content strategy.

Brands that have mastered meme use tend to do so sparingly, which can add to the humor if it’s unexpected. This HubSpot post on LinkedIn showed the benefit of their courses in a fun way that likely yielded higher engagement than a straightforward promotional post.

Infographics: Breaking Down Complexity

Infographics combine text and visuals to present information in a visually appealing and easily understandable format. They’re excellent for breaking down complex concepts and are particularly useful for step-by-step guides, data-driven stories, and educational content.

Contently helped the American Kennel Club (AKC) incorporate infographics into its content strategy. The company leaned on Contently’s expert creative network to design an infographic to help debunk the age-old myth equating one dog year to seven human years.

The impact was immediate and impressive. After adding the visual to their content, the original article swiftly skyrocketed to become one of AKC’s most-viewed pieces of content. This success story underscores how Contently’s platform empowers brands like AKC to not only enhance the educational value of their content but also drive remarkable engagement through visually compelling infographics.

Why Brands Need to Embrace Visual Storytelling

While visual content is not limited to these categories, they are some of the most prevalent forms you’ll encounter in the digital landscape. Understanding the strengths and characteristics of each type of visual content is essential for crafting a well-rounded content strategy. Your choice of visual content should align with your brand’s personality, your message, and your target audience.

A masterfully crafted visual story possesses the transformative power to not only seize attention but also to awaken emotions, foster trust, and inspire action. So, embrace the art of visual storytelling as a potent means to not just convey your message but to etch it into the hearts and minds of your audience, leaving an indelible mark in a fast-paced and ever-evolving digital world.

Subscribe to The Content Strategist newsletter to stay updated on the latest trends and strategies in crafting compelling visual stories for your brand.

The post Visual Storytelling Examples To Captivate Your Audience appeared first on Contently.

Unfortunately, you forgot that basing your entire campaign around a single asset isn’t always the best way to reach your entire audience. Considering that only about 20% of marketing emails even get opened, chances are good that most people will never even know your wonderful eBook exists.

But wait, there’s good news! If you had the foresight to treat this eBook as merely one component of a content atomization strategy, you’ll know that your campaign is just getting started.

Reaching a Wider Audience with Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy

Today’s content marketers must navigate a digital landscape that features a wide variety of mediums, each with their own unique audiences and characteristics. The example above demonstrates the potential risk of focusing too heavily on only one of those mediums. That fancy eBook may be packed full of insights, but not everyone you want to reach is going to take the time to read it.

That’s not because the average person has a shorter attention span than a goldfish (an oft-repeated internet “statistic” that actually isn’t true, by the way). It’s because not everyone engages with information and media in the same way.

If you want to reach the widest audience with your digital content marketing strategy, you need to find ways to leverage multiple mediums to your advantage. That means not just creating eBooks but also infographics, videos, blog posts, social media posts, and so on.

Of course, creating all that content sounds daunting. That’s where content atomization comes in.

What Is Content Atomization, and How Does It Work?

Content atomization begins with a theme or a large piece of content and breaks it down into a series of much smaller pieces that can be distributed across multiple marketing channels. This can involve repurposing content directly, but it’s really more about creating related content that’s connected by a common theme.

By incorporating all of these smaller topics into a broader digital content marketing strategy that focuses on a common theme, you can turn what would have been a single asset that appeals to a specific audience into a multifaceted campaign that gets more engagement, traffic, and traction.

Here’s how that atomization strategy might work in practice. For some real-world context, let’s imagine your eBook is a fulfillment trends report for a supply chain company:

• Atom 1: A blog post focusing on automation technology trends covered in the eBook.
• Atom 2: A LinkedIn carousel ad highlighting a key statistic about warehouse automation followed by steps your company is taking to stay ahead of industry trends.
• Atom 3: A short video (which could be shared via social media, email, or even on a website) showcasing the ways your company is using automation technology.
• Atom 4: A podcast episode focused on automation trends.
• Atom 5: An infographic that features important data about automation trends (which are all contained in your eBook) and showcases your expertise.
• Atom 6: Social media posts consisting of snippets of content from Atoms 1-5.

Just like that, you’ve got multiple pieces of content built around a common theme that all focus on different audiences. Since everything is drawn from the same source, you’re not forcing your content team to start from scratch with each asset, which streamlines your ideation and development process.

5 Benefits of Content Atomization

Deployed over time, content atomization provides several benefits to your marketing efforts. Here are some of the most important benefits:

1. More Efficient Production

Since content atomization focuses on breaking down larger pieces of content into smaller, more manageable units, you’ll end up saving time and resources. Marketers can more easily create, edit, or update bite-sized compared to extensive articles or lengthy videos. Furthermore, leveraging your existing resources ensures that valuable content like quotes, statistics, and graphs won’t end up buried and forgotten within larger content pieces.

2. Increased Reach

Atomization allows content to be reshaped to fit a variety of platforms and channels. This not only means that the same foundational content can reach audiences on platforms they prefer or frequent the most but also that your content doesn’t have to be abandoned if it doesn’t immediately find an audience in one medium. With this approach, you can significantly amplify your brand’s share of voice, visibility, and touchpoints across the digital landscape without having to create an entirely new strategy for each channel.

3. Better SEO

Search engine optimization thrives on relevance and diversity. By atomizing content, you can tailor each piece to target specific keywords or search intent. Instead of having one long article that touches on multiple topics, you can have several shorter pieces that hone in on specific keywords. This increases the chances of ranking for a wider range of search queries, thereby boosting your website’s visibility in search engine results pages. As you build up more content around related themes and keywords, you’ll strengthen your rankings even more.

4. Improved Engagement

While it may not be true that the average attention span is only eight seconds (a reminder to content marketers to always fact-check your stats), it is true that many people prefer concise, easily digestible content that delivers value quickly. Atomized content caters to these preferences by meeting audiences where they’re most comfortable. When you provide them with relevant content that’s perfectly sized, audiences are more likely to engage, share, and interact. This can lead to higher click-through rates, increased social media shares, and overall enhanced user engagement.

5. Stronger Authority

Depth and breadth of knowledge are two key indicators of authority in any field. Through content atomization, you can showcase your expertise on a wide range of topics within your niche. By consistently delivering in-depth, valuable, and diverse content, you demonstrate to your audience that you are not just knowledgeable about one aspect of your industry but have a comprehensive understanding. Over time, this can position your brand as a go-to source of information, thereby strengthening your reputation and authority in the market.

Get More Mileage Out of Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy

Content atomization allows marketers to easily create content for multiple mediums and reach different audiences without having to start from scratch every time. By thinking about how your content can be broken down and distributed across multiple channels, you can turn nearly any piece of quality content into the centerpiece of a multifaceted digital content marketing strategy.

With Contently, you can put that strategy into action and get more value out of every piece of content you produce. Whether you’re using our content marketing platform to manage your campaigns or tapping into our creative network to keep iterating on key themes, Contently makes it easy to start atomizing your content and expanding your reach!

The Content Strategist is your very best resource for ways to reach audiences across multiple platforms and mediums. Subscribe today to get these cutting-edge strategies and insights delivered directly to your inbox!

The post Expand Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy Reach with Content Atomization appeared first on Contently.

Marketers are now caught in a balancing act—crafting high-quality content at breakneck speeds while ensuring they remain a step ahead of AI’s ever-advancing algorithms. As this new landscape unfolds, understanding the interplay between human creativity and the precision of AI SEO tools becomes pivotal for success.

The Impact of AI SEO on Content Creation

HubSpot recently published a State of Artificial Intelligence report, which found that 44% of marketers foresee a positive impact on their SEO strategy, seeing effectiveness in multiple areas.

Google has been astutely observant of the AI wave sweeping over content creation. Their stance is clear: While the technology is intriguing, the emphasis is unwaveringly on rewarding high-quality content. The burning question is: Does Google endorse AI-generated content? A deep dive into a recent announcement provides some clarity. Google acknowledges the potential of AI but is explicit that the content must not sacrifice quality on the altar of automation.

The end goal is the same. Content should be informative and relevant and meet the user’s query comprehensively. So, while AI SEO is reshaping the landscape, the bar for content excellence set by Google remains unchanged.

That being said, the emergence of tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, Frase, and Surfer means that the market is inundated with derivative or superficial content. So, it’s more crucial than ever to elevate your content, ensuring it offers genuine value to discerning readers.

Strategies to Stay Ahead of AI in SEO

The digital realm, empowered by AI SEO tools, is evolving rapidly. As a result, marketers are constantly recalibrating their strategies to stay a step ahead. Here are some cornerstone strategies to ensure your content not only matches but surpasses AI-driven outputs:

1. Answer User Queries Effectively and Match Intent.

Search engines prioritize content that effectively answers user queries. It’s not just about incorporating the right keywords; it’s about understanding the intent behind those searches. Dive deep into what the user is really seeking and tailor your content to provide comprehensive answers.

2. Uphold E-E-A-T Principles.

E-E-A-T, standing for Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness, has emerged as a defining metric for content.

• Expertise: Showcase in-depth knowledge on your chosen topic. This isn’t about surface-level information but rather expressing a profound understanding.
• Experience: Demonstrate authentic, first-hand knowledge and encounters on the topic at hand. While AI can attempt to emulate human perspectives, it lacks the authenticity and uniqueness that real-life experiences bring to content.
• Authority: Establish your brand or website as a go-to source for specific topics or industries. Earn recognition through backlinks from reputable sources, endorsements, and consistent publication of valuable content.
• Trustworthiness: Ensure that your content is accurate, backed by credible sources, and that your website provides a secure user experience.

3. Emphasize the Human Touch.

While AI can generate content based on algorithms and data patterns, it lacks the innate human ability to truly resonate on an emotional level—yet. One report projects that content created using AI will reach human-level sophistication by 2028-2030.

Your content should be insightful, provoking thought or emotion, and should be able to establish a genuine connection with the reader. Share personal anecdotes, use relatable examples, and frame information in a manner that echoes human experiences. Remember, while AI can mimic human writing to an extent, the depth, nuance, and empathy of genuinely human content remain unparalleled.

By embracing these strategies, marketers can not only meet the evolving challenges of AI SEO but also ensure that their content continues to shine, resonate, and rank.

4. Strengthen AI Outputs With Precision Prompts.

AI, as advanced as it may be, operates on the principle of “garbage in, garbage out.” The input or prompt you provide to an AI tool plays a critical role in determining the quality and relevance of its output. When deploying AI for content creation, optimization, or even research, the magic often lies in the precision and clarity of the prompts.

But before jumping right in with prompts aimed at your main objective, back up a bit and start with priming steps that provide context and background for your main prompts. Let’s say your goal is to write a blog post about low-cost home decorating ideas to make your home look like you hired an interior designer. You may start to prime the AI model with a little background personality and topic guidance:

As you can see, priming can help generate topics and ideas that you can use to explore further/expand or use as a basis for your blog outline.

How to Use AI for SEO Optimization

Leveraging AI tools can significantly elevate SEO strategies. While AI presents immense potential, the key is understanding how to deploy it for optimal results without over-reliance. Here are several ways to use generative AI tools for optimization:

Data Analysis: AI tools can sift through massive datasets in moments, offering insights into user behavior, preferences, and search patterns, all crucial for tailoring effective SEO strategies.

Keyword Research: Beyond identifying high-volume search terms, AI can predict emerging trends, helping brands stay ahead of the curve and capture new audiences.

In the prompt below, for example, the writer uses AI to better understand what might be behind a user’s search intent for a specific keyword. Such insights can help you write content that’s more closely aligned with the information searchers are looking for.

Optimizing Meta Descriptions: AI can generate succinct and compelling meta descriptions that not only fit the character limit but are also optimized for click-through rates.

E-Commerce Product Descriptions: With vast product ranges, creating unique descriptions for each product is a challenge. AI can generate descriptive, persuasive, and SEO-friendly product details, enhancing discoverability.

AI SEO: The Danger Zones

In the enthusiastic rush to embrace AI’s capabilities in SEO, it’s crucial also to understand its limitations and potential pitfalls.

While it’s a powerful tool, AI can sometimes lead marketers astray if not wielded judiciously. Here are a few ways this can happen.

• Full-Length AI Articles: Generating entire pieces using AI tools, especially ones like ChatGPT, may result in content peppered with inaccuracies. Such articles may also lack the nuanced, genuine human voice that readers resonate with.
• The Plague of Unoriginality: Simply relying on AI to spin existing content or churn out repetitive pieces won’t do any favors for your SEO strategy. Search engines like Google have become adept at recognizing and deprioritizing content that’s not authentic or unique.
• Monotony Alert: An over-reliance on AI for content generation can result in monotonous, formulaic outputs. These lack a distinct voice or perspective, making it hard for brands to distinguish themselves in a saturated online environment.
• Skewed Data Interpretation: AI tools are data-driven. However, without proper human oversight, they might misinterpret certain trends or user behaviors, leading to misguided SEO strategies.

In the evolving landscape of digital marketing, AI undoubtedly has a pivotal role in shaping SEO. However, its most effective use is as a supportive asset, amplifying human creativity and expertise rather than attempting to replace the irreplaceable.

Embrace AI’s Efficiency Without Compromising Content Integrity

The rise of AI in SEO is nothing short of remarkable. Its profound capabilities are reshaping how we approach content creation and optimization. Yet, while AI offers powerful tools that can streamline processes and provide insights previously inaccessible, its function is supplementary.

AI is unparalleled in handling vast amounts of data quickly, predicting trends, or optimizing routine tasks. However, its ability to genuinely connect with human readers, to tell stories with nuance and empathy, remains limited.

In an increasingly AI-influenced landscape, some pillars of effective SEO remain unshaken. The hallmarks of quality, originality, and the indelible human touch are irreplaceable. These are the cornerstones upon which the success of SEO strategies rests, even in this era of rapid technological advancement.

Embracing AI’s strengths while staying rooted in authentic, human-centric content strategies ensures not only SEO success but also genuine, lasting connections with audiences.

Keep pace with the evolving world of AI in content creation. Subscribe to The Content Strategist newsletter and be the first to uncover the latest strategies, tools, and innovations shaping the future of content marketing.

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Although the new Search Generative Experience feature garnered most of the headlines earlier this year by serving up generative AI responses to search queries, the launch of Google Perspectives could ultimately have a much bigger impact on content strategies.

Wait, What Is Google Perspectives?

Launched in June of 2023, Google Perspectives is a new mobile feature that builds upon the search engine’s rapidly growing AI-powered capabilities. By selecting the “Perspectives” filter at the top of the search results, you’ll find a series of image thumbnails that link out to content created by people sharing their experiences and insights about the topic. These results take the form of long- and short-form videos, discussion board posts, customer reviews, and social media posts.

But doesn’t Google already provide links to this type of content in search engine results pages (SERPs)? Not exactly. Perspectives results are not driven by the same factors, putting less priority on traditional SEO stalwarts like keywords and domain authority while prioritizing authenticity, personalized insight, and unique experiences in content.

Google has positioned Perspectives as another important step toward supporting its shift to “helpful content” over the last year. As the filter continues to be refined, it will favor content that’s created to provide value to users rather than simply attract clicks.

Of course, the fact that 40% of Gen Z users currently turn to TikTok and Instagram instead of Google when searching for information is also a driving factor behind the new feature. These users prefer content that feels like it was created by an authentic person rather than something churned out by an SEO strategy.

With Perspectives, Google is trying to prioritize unique creator-led content found in videos, Reddit threads, and social media posts over content like product pages, blog posts, and professional articles.

Getting Perspective on Chocolate Chip Cookies

As an example of how Google Perspectives works in practice, let’s do a quick search for chocolate chip cookies. Since I didn’t want to waste time on a subpar recipe, I used “best chocolate chip cookie recipes” as the search query.

Here’s the basic SERP I got back:

Okay, great. Two recipes both proclaiming to be the best. They certainly provide useful content and are very professional, but neither of them feels very personal. When I’m looking for a good recipe, I usually want a recommendation that sounds like it comes from a friend or a family member rather than a cookbook.

If I click on the Perspectives filter, however, I get a very different set of results:

As you can see, there’s zero overlap between these results. The Perspectives filter provides a combination of YouTube videos and a Reddit conversation. Scrolling down the page, I found more YouTube videos, a Quora Q&A, and even a TikTok video. The type of content being served up here has a completely different feel to it. If I’m looking for insights that feel more personable and authentic, Perspectives produces far better results than a normal Google search.

What Does Google Perspectives Mean for SEO Strategies?

With each new Google update, there’s a tendency to proclaim something to the effect of, “Search will never be the same!” That may be a bit of an overstatement—however, it’s likely that Perspectives will have an enduring impact on how people find information.

It’s best to think about the new feature as a continuation of Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) framework, which rates the overall value of content. Perspectives hones in on the “experience” criteria, which was introduced in December of 2022. Google defines experience as direct familiarity with the content in question.

Keeping with our chocolate chip cookie example, a video of someone actually making a cookie or a message board conversation about which recipe turned out best would both rank higher on the “experience” criteria than a simple blog post of a recipe.

While it’s unclear how much weight Perspectives gives to experience-rich content, it certainly gives a different type of result. As another example, compare these results for finding a great sushi restaurant in Los Angeles:

The standard search provides me with a map and some reviews. Certainly helpful, but it’s not much more than a list of locations. Things get more interesting when I shift over to Perspectives, though. Scrolling through the results feels like being in a room filled with actual people who all want to share their experiences about their favorite sushi spots with me. That’s the kind of enthusiasm and first-hand knowledge I’m looking for when I’m trying to pick a place for dinner!

Why Creator-Led Content Marketing Is More Important Than Ever

Okay, enough about food. What does all this mean for marketers and their SEO strategies? Put simply, the shifting emphasis towards “experience-based” content will mean that creating authentic, personality-driven material will be more important than ever.

Creative content marketers already understand this. If you’ve put in the work to build an engaging, authentic brand that proactively connects with relevant influencers, advocates, and loyal customers, you’re in a good position to capitalize on the changes that Perspectives will bring to search behavior.

How to Make Creator-Led Content Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Remember, Perspectives is focused on serving up experience-based content that feels authentic and personable. If you want your brand to rank in those searches, you’ll need to engage with content creators who are sharing their experiences with audiences and have built up trust with them over time. A recent study by Oracle found that 37% of consumers trust social media influences over brands.

Working with creators can help you make inroads with their followers and raise awareness about your brand. With so many people generating content to share their experiences, each advocate you win over can potentially become a new source of user-generated content to be served up by Perspectives.

But don’t confine yourself to a narrow definition of creators! While Perspectives is skewed heavily towards video content, it also holds reviews and discussion board conversations in high regard and will frequently provide them among the first ten search results. Many people already turn to places like Reddit to find answers to their questions, so make an effort to engage with your audience wherever it can be found.

Don’t be afraid to shake up your existing approach to content with a dash of authentic experience while you’re at it. Sure, a flashy, stylized video about your product might look nice, but telling a story about the same product in a real-life scenario is much more useful to viewers and will likely rank better in Perspectives-driven search results. The same goes for travel content that focuses on how visiting a location made travelers feel rather than simply running down an itinerary of where they went.

Focusing on experience-based, creator-led content will only benefit your long-term marketing strategy as Google continues to refine its helpful content parameters to provide users with information that’s both valuable and genuine. Remember to prioritize taking part in authentic conversations that provide meaningful insights for audiences. Every conversation your brand is involved in is potentially a hidden gem that could provide tremendous value to someone when it shows up in a search.

Looking for insights when it comes to building a creator-led content strategy that puts you in the heart of the conversation? Sign up for The Content Strategist newsletter to find out how you can boost engagement without sacrificing authenticity.

The post What Is Google Perspectives and How Will It Impact Content Strategy? appeared first on Contently.

But the flood of AI tools hitting the market can also make it hard for content marketers to stay informed or know which tools are worth exploring. To make matters worse, many of these tools are still in their early developmental stages, and it’s difficult to determine which ones will maintain longevity.

To help you narrow the field, we’ve identified six of the best AI marketing tools you can use to streamline content creation and strategy:

1. ClickUp

ClickUp is an innovative productivity platform that helps teams track tasks, communicate, create, and collaborate. Think of it like this: If you put Monday.com, ChatGPT, Slack, and Google Docs in a blender, you’d get ClickUp. With its intuitive interface and intelligent features, ClickUp allows you to organize, collaborate, and prioritize your projects seamlessly.

The tool uses AI algorithms to automate repetitive tasks, such as scheduling, assigning, and tracking progress, enabling content marketing managers and their teams to focus more on strategic planning and creative content creation rather than getting caught up in administrative tasks.

Recently, the company launched a ClickUp AI add-on, which acts as a role-based AI assistant. It includes over a hundred AI tools that let you draft emails, summarize documents, outline blog posts, or create content briefs. In addition to using ClickUp to streamline workflows and collaboration, companies can evaluate the platform to consolidate their tech stacks.

2. SurferSEO

SurferSEO is a comprehensive SEO tool designed to help content marketers boost organic traffic, increase visibility, and improve search engine rankings. It provides a streamlined SEO workflow that leverages next-generation AI for content creation and optimization.

SurferSEO helps content marketers with keyword research and content creation by generating top-quality, well-optimized articles in just 20 minutes. It also assists in structuring content with unique potential headings and questions, optimizing in any language, and checking articles for plagiarism to avoid potential penalties. SurferSEO is compatible with your existing platforms, like Google Docs, WordPress, and Jasper, making it a versatile tool for content marketers.

One of the key features of SurferSEO is Surfer AI. This cutting-edge technology allows users to create ready-to-rank articles in minutes. It automates researching topics, creating briefs, and writing content, saving time and resources. Surfer AI provides options to customize your content’s tone of voice, making them sound witty, friendly, or professional based on the audience’s preferences. SurferSEO’s AI-powered optimization features make it an invaluable tool for content marketing managers looking to maximize the impact of their content.

3. Smartly.io

Smartly.io is a SaaS digital advertising platform designed to streamline the process of reaching and engaging customers across multiple channels, including Meta, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, Google Ads, and Google Marketing Platform. It provides a centralized solution for campaign management, allowing marketers to launch multiple campaigns and ad groups simultaneously. The platform features automated workflows, eliminating the need for manual work and making campaign management more efficient.

Smartly.io’s AI Lab is an innovation hub that combines artificial intelligence with marketing expertise to simplify campaign management and enhance creative scaling. Leveraging generative AI, it enables rapid enhancement, personalization, and scaling of creative, transforming tasks that used to take days or weeks into quick, efficient processes. The AI Lab also offers Ad Intelligence, providing tailored insights based on marketers’ goals to help plan more effective campaigns. Essentially, the AI Lab acts as a co-pilot for marketers, helping to elevate campaigns and achieve more with less effort.

4. Lately AI

Lately.ai is an AI-powered social selling platform designed to transform content into effective social media posts. By learning any brand or employee voice, it increases visibility and triples inbound leads. The platform generates meaningful, conversion-driven content, making it a valuable tool for content marketers. It amplifies brand voices across all channels and networks, resulting in a significant increase in relevant social media posts.

In addition to enhancing social media visibility, Lately.ai boosts lead generation and engagement by consistently producing engaging content that resonates with the target audience. It also increases sales conversions by generating high-performing, channel-specific social posts. The platform offers a full-service social media publishing platform with a robust marketing calendar and scheduling features and supports multiple languages, making it a versatile tool for global content marketing campaigns.

5. FullStory

Understanding your audience is crucial for crafting effective content strategies. FullStory is a digital experience intelligence platform that allows you to gain valuable insights into your customers’ online behavior. With its user-friendly interface and robust analytics, FullStory enables content marketing managers to identify pain points, optimize user experience, and tailor their content to meet the exact needs of their target audience.

One of the key features of FullStory is its auto-capture capability, which reveals answers to questions businesses might not even think to ask. It offers complete coverage of key events and long-tail data, allowing businesses to discover bugs, friction, and opportunities that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. The platform integrates seamlessly with other data tools through an open API and a growing catalog of integrations, enriching the tech stack of businesses.

6. Albert

Albert is an AI marketing tool that revolutionizes digital advertising by automating and optimizing campaign management. By leveraging AI algorithms, Albert analyzes vast amounts of data to identify target audiences, optimize ad placements, and continuously improve campaign performance.

The platform processes and analyzes audience and tactic data at scale, autonomously allocating budget, optimizing creative, and evolving campaigns across paid search, social, and programmatic channels. This allows content marketing managers to focus on building powerful brand and audience connections, improving omnichannel customer experiences, and achieving higher content ROI.

Leverage AI to Boost Content Marketing Effectiveness

Our list of the best AI marketing tools offers incredible opportunities for content marketing managers to streamline content creation and strategy. Each tool offers unique features and benefits, ranging from task management and optimization to automated content creation and data-driven decision-making. By leveraging these tools, content marketers can stay ahead of the competition, drive better results, and maximize their content’s impact. Embrace the power of AI and unlock new possibilities for your content marketing success.

Subscribe to The Content Strategist newsletter to discover more ways to streamline content development and stay on top of strategy trends.

The post The Best AI Marketing Tools To Revolutionize Your Content Game appeared first on Contently.

At the same time, patients have started to think more like consumers by taking a proactive approach to their healthcare.

Now that patients are more apt to research conditions, weigh treatment options, and compare provider costs, healthcare organizations are feeling the digital transformation pressure. As if that wasn’t enough, healthcare content marketers must also navigate the industry’s strict regulations.

Our recent State of Content Marketing: Healthcare 2023 report takes a deep dive into key strategies healthcare content marketers should prioritize to drive patient engagement and meet consumer needs.

Let’s take a quick look at five strategies you should focus on to catch up and keep pace with brands that create successful customer experiences.

1. Prioritize Customer Experience

Providing a positive patient experience is crucial in the healthcare industry, and customers expect healthcare providers to deliver the same level of service as other industries.

In fact, a recent Salesforce survey found that almost 90 percent of customers consider the experience they have interacting with a company as important as its products or services. Content strategists can play a crucial role in improving the customer experience by prioritizing several areas.

Promote Positive Customer Experiences on Your Website

A user-friendly website is essential to ensure a positive patient experience. Patients should find information easily, including office hours, online scheduling, and availability of specific healthcare providers.

In addition, search engine optimization (SEO) is also critical for website performance. You can evaluate your website for best practices in user experience, content, brand perception, and responsiveness to improve its overall performance.

Provide a Personalized Patient Portal

A personalized patient portal can empower patients to take a more proactive role in their healthcare. You can offer self-educational resources on visit preparation, common procedures, or medication options through the portal. By providing access to this information, healthcare organizations can improve patient satisfaction and reduce the workload on healthcare providers.

Create a Resource Center

Creating a resource center that addresses the most common patient pain points and provides thought leadership on highly searched topics is a game-changer for your organization.

A resource center can act as a centralized location for all the information that patients need, making it easier for them to find the resources they need to make informed decisions about their healthcare.

Boulder Care Exemplifies Customer Experience Excellence

Boulder Care is an online healthcare company that prioritizes customer experience by offering supervised medical treatment, peer recovery coaching, and a care advocate to ensure everything stays on track for people living with substance abuse disorders.

Clients can connect with their care providers through private messaging and video conferencing on their easy-to-use app from anywhere in the world. By integrating all aspects of patient care online, Boulder Care provides an excellent customer experience, which sets them apart in the healthcare industry.

2. Amplify Personalization Tactics

In today’s marketplace, personalization is key to providing a positive customer experience. It involves serving the right information to the right customer at the right time on the right channel. Despite the challenges of managing vast amounts of data, AI is helping many industries, including healthcare, improve customer experiences and personalize interactions.

While healthcare organizations face challenges with data privacy laws, they can still prioritize personalized consumer journeys. The key is to ensure the patient is the “hero” of the content, and healthcare organizations should keep their target audience at the center of everything they produce.

By doing so, they can improve the patient experience and build long-term relationships with their customers. The easiest way to do this is to keep questions like these in mind as you write:

• What problem does the reader/persona have?
• What questions might they ask a healthcare provider?
• What solutions or answers are they looking for?
• What stage of care is the reader in while consuming this piece of content?
• What is the action you want them to take after reading?

Buyer personas can also help segment the audience based on varying concerns, so you can create content to address their specific needs.

Cerebral Provides Personalized Patient Resources

Cerebral, a telehealth company, provides access to affordable, high-quality mental healthcare and uses personalized resources to improve the patient experience. Counselors offer tailored resources, such as one-sheeters on dealing with panic attacks, to address specific patient needs.

They also use personas to target specific audiences on their blog, providing useful information about managing and alleviating symptoms of various ailments. Their resource center offers comprehensive research on mental health, suicide prevention, and behavioral health.

By personalizing content in a meaningful and authentic way, Cerebral builds long-term relationships with patients and improves the overall patient experience.

3. Integrate Innovative Martech into Healthcare Content Marketing

The COVID-19 pandemic saw U.S. federal government and healthcare researchers using AI to quickly understand the virus. In fact, experts expect the global AI healthcare market to increase six-fold by 2027.

Healthcare marketers can leverage AI to improve customer experiences by using customer information from call tracking, chatbots, patient portals, and mobile apps for personalization.

Chatbots can answer questions, provide access to content, and even help schedule appointments, with the global healthcare chatbot market expected to grow nearly 10-fold by 2032.

By capturing customer data, marketers can personalize future experiences with individual consumers, too.

UCHealth Integrates Martech into its Strategy

UCHealth, a healthcare network in Colorado, is using AI to improve customer experience through a chatbot named Livi. Patients can access Livi through voice search on smart speakers, and the network is working to integrate the chatbot into their electronic medical records system and mobile app.

Despite data privacy and protection concerns in healthcare, organizations can use AI technology to personalize content and improve customer experiences. Consider starting with a chatbot as a simple first step.

4. Strategize With SEO in Mind

According to Gartner’s 2022 State of Marketing Budget and Strategy report, healthcare digital marketing budgets are mostly spent on search advertising. However, as third-party cookies become obsolete, healthcare marketers will need to nurture first-party data.

Your SEO strategy should prioritize high-quality content with competitive keywords and unique perspectives on trending topics is essential. Personalization is important in delivering the right content to the right person at the right time through the right channel.

Healthcare companies must also provide reliable and accurate patient education to their audience. The key is creating healthcare content marketing that answers the questions and addresses topics patients are searching for.

UPMC Targets Search Intent with its SEO Strategy

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a distinguished healthcare provider and insurer, uses a cohesive content strategy that caters to patient interests, aligning content with searchers’ intent and generating articles based on engagement.

Their myUPMC platform consolidates all UPMC-related information, available for patients anywhere, anytime, to help enhance customer experience.

This comprehensive resource hub offers a range of content formats, including blog posts, videos, and symptom checkers, aimed at providing patients with the information they need to make informed decisions about their health, ultimately improving patient education.

5. Deploy More Short-Form Videos

Short-form video is becoming a top marketing trend for 2023, with explainer videos being watched by 96 percent of viewers to learn more about products and services. Testimonials from former patients or staff can create engaging moments and leverage user-generated content (UGC) to connect with customers or clients.

An effective healthcare content marketing strategy also includes repurposing content that has already been created — like infographics, quotes from blogs, and sections from longer-form videos like webinars — for social media content short-form videos. Companies can increase web traffic and awareness of their brand by incorporating short-form videos into their marketing strategy.

BetterHelp Uses Video to Educate and Engage Their Audience

BetterHelp is a popular online counseling service that has leveraged the power of short-form videos to cater to its customers and prospects.

The company has tapped into social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, employing personalization and SEO strategies to create content that aligns with its target audience’s preferences.

They have successfully engaged millennials and Gen Z, expanding their reach by utilizing TikTok to distribute their message to a broader audience.

Healthcare companies must adopt an innovative and forward-thinking content marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition. As we’ve shown, organizations that prioritize the patient experience can succeed in a highly competitive market and ensure that customers discover the information they need to make informed decisions about their health.

Learn how to accelerate your digital transformation using Contently’s content marketing platform, and download your copy of 5 Content Strategies Transforming the Patient Experience today.

The post 5 Healthcare Content Marketing Strategies That Prioritize the Patient Experience appeared first on Contently.

When it comes to boosting your organic search visibility, creating content for search engine result pages (or SERPs) is essential. Yet, with everyone now familiar with the “content is king” adage, marketers must pull out all the stops to ensure their content stands out from the rest.

This is where schema markups come in.

Wait, What Are Schema Markups — and Why Should I Care?

Schema markups are snippets of code that help search engines better understand a webpage’s content. Because schema markups deliver users with more relevant, rich results in SERPs, they can boost websites’ click-through rates by a whopping 36% — one study found that, on average, websites with schema markups rank four positions higher in SERPs than competitors without them.

Here’s an example of how Expedia uses schema markups to provide a snapshot of information upfront — including the number of rental cars available, the top deals of the day, and answers to common questions — so users can quickly find their perfect vacation ride (and save their frustration for the long rental counter line later).

How to Level Up Your Content with Schema Markups

If you’re skilled in writing great marketing content and backend code, kudos to you. For the rest of us, one of the biggest perks of schema markups is that you don’t need any web development skills to implement them. That said, given the variety of schema markups — each with its own unique formatting requirements and limitations with certain content management systems — getting started can feel overwhelming. Here are some tips to help you get over the initial hump.

1. Understand the different types of schema markups.

One of the first (and most crucial steps) of leveraging schema markups involves identifying the most appropriate one for your content. With a dozen schema markup options available for Google Search alone, you’ll want to look up which best reflects your page, whether it’s “Articles,” “Products,” “Question & Answer Page,” or “Events.”

E-commerce brands, for example, will likely rely on “Product,” “Price,” and “Reviews and Rating” schemas the most. On the other hand, nonprofits will typically use the “Organization” schema, which displays website URLs, phone numbers, addresses, founders, and other key information. Meanwhile, news organizations will leverage — you guessed it — “Article” schemas, so their top stories will appear like this:

2. Use a schema markup generator.

If you’re panicking about fiddling around with your site’s HTML, don’t be. Tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can automatically generate code snippets for adding schema markups.

After selecting the data type and entering the URL or HTML, you’ll start tagging different elements on the page — in the case of a blog post, you’ll tag content like “Author” or “Date Published.” Once you’ve marked the most important items, simply click “Create HTML,” download the HTML file, and copy and paste it into your CMS.

A follow-up question you might ask is, “What is the recommended format for implementing schema markups?” Without getting too deep in the weeds, there are three schema encoding formats: RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD. Google endorses JSON-LD, which is a type of JavaScript notation that is faster and cleaner code compared to the other two — it’s also the default output when you use a schema markup generator.

3. Leverage a schema markup testing tool before going live.

Nobody wants their website to load incorrectly and cause bounce rates to skyrocket. So, once you’ve implemented your code, use schema markup testing tools such as Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool or Bing Webmaster Diagnostic Tool to test and ensure that your page is functioning properly.

Pro tip: These schema markup testing tools don’t just analyze published web pages—you can also input the HTML you previously generated but haven’t yet added to your CMS. This will give you a chance to preview how your page will look in SERPs.

If everything looks correct, you can confidently update your CMS and hit the “Publish” button, so your site can go live. And heads up: It can take a few weeks for Google to crawl your site, so if your page isn’t immediately appearing as a rich result in SERPs, don’t panic!

Level Up Your Content Marketing with Schema Markups

No matter how inspiring, valuable, or entertaining your content is, your efforts will only be moot unless you use the latest SEO tactics to get traffic to your site in the first place. So whether it’s implementing schema markups, building a backlink strategy, or updating your slugs with keywords, take the time to understand SEO tips and tricks that’ll support your content marketing engine.

The result? Optimized webpages that’ll rank higher on SERPs, have more organic search visibility, and boost the traffic for your site — so you can get one step closer to your business and marketing goals.

Sign up for The Content Strategist newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything you need to know about content marketing, SEO, and everything in between.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Ranking Higher With Schema Markups appeared first on Contently.

A lot has changed since then—namely, the arrival of two new user privacy laws (GDPR and CCPA), increased use of mobile apps, and the phasing out of third-party cookies. To adapt, GA4 is an overhaul of the current version (Universal Analytics or UA) and is designed for the world we live in now.

For content marketers, GA4 offers more detailed data on the user’s journey across apps and websites and, using machine learning, GA4 can predict how users will behave. With a clearer map of how users got to your content and what they’re likely to do next, marketers can set more specific goals for which content types to produce and how to measure their success.

With that said, let’s explore two of GA4’s standout features and three tips for content marketing teams to capitalize on.

GA4’s Most Significant Features for Content Marketers

With GA4, Google is tackling the biggest challenge marketers face today: understanding customer behavior. That’s why the two most significant features in GA4 address the often-fragmented customer journey across apps and websites and how to track user behavior in a cookie-less world.

Track Users Across Apps and Websites

Consumers now engage with brands across different devices using mobile apps and websites. This “journey” can be disjointed and hard to track with the current version of Google Analytics, which only tracks website activity. GA4 combines website and app usage into a single report. The emphasis is now firmly on tracking “the user” rather than “user sessions.”

Marketers will have a clearer view of the whole customer journey, from where customers first engage with your brand to where and when they make a purchase. Armed with multi-attribution data that accounts for all the user touchpoints within your brand — from, say, mobile app to website to blog post to video to demo sign-up — marketers can see the value each touchpoint brings to the journey and measure how well a piece of content leads to a conversion.

Use Machine Learning to Predict User Behavior

New data privacy laws combined with users demanding more control over how their web activity data gets used have led to the slow death of third-party cookies. GA4 was built with this slow death in mind.

GA4 uses machine learning and data modeling to fill in gaps where user behavior data will be incomplete without cookies. GA4’s machine learning model will scrutinize first-party and conversion data to predict if users will make a purchase or churn (using probability scores).

GA4’s machine learning modeling is key for marketers because it measures which audiences are most likely to convert based on past trends. Marketers can then target these audiences with the appropriate content.

3 Tips for Preparing Your Content Strategy for GA4

For brands, GA4 offers more tangible ways to measure if you’re truly reaching your audience and meeting your content marketing goals. With that in mind, here are three tips for getting your content house in order ahead of the switch to GA4.

1. Create Specific Content Goals for GA4.

Because GA4 allows teams to track and analyze data from both mobile apps and websites, there will be more data. Thankfully, GA4 consolidates that data into one report.

But a pile of data is not a strategy. You have to make sense of the data you’ve accessed and apply it to your content. Vague goals will only create a disconnect between your user data and the content you produce.

Examples of specific, measurable content goals that take advantage of the new GA4 capabilities include:

• Increase organic traffic
• Increase user engagement (time on page, shares, comments)
• Improve conversion rates (sign-ups, sales)
• Increase new leads
• Improve content marketing ROI

GA4 also allows you to set goals within the platform for easy tracking.

Of course, you would set content goals regardless of GA4, but GA4 provides deeper analysis—via its Pages and Screens reports—of the most-read content, pages users scrolled on the most, and pages with the most traffic.

GA4 provides a greater understanding of traffic patterns and topics that resonate, so you can pursue content goals with more confidence.

2. Get to Know Your Audience Better With GA4.

You should already know your target audience’s tendencies and behavior, but GA4 can help you go deeper with its User Metrics feature.

User metrics provide data on the number of users who engaged with a piece of content, whether those users are new or active, and how long they stay on the page. It also measures whether they used your app or website to access the content.

Additionally, GA4 allows you to create specific audiences to target based on their behavior and customer journeys.

Caution: Don’t rely solely on GA4 to understand your audience. Be sure you’re talking to them and reading the comments they leave on your website and social media channels. You can then use GA4 to assess how well your content engages and keeps them coming back.

3. Establish Your Most Important Content Types Using GA4.

To have a full-funnel content strategy, you should produce different content types for each stage—blogs, eBooks, videos, case studies, etc.

However, with so much content and different metrics for each type, it’s easy for any company to fall into the trap of producing too much content and not measuring it properly.

GA4 excels at tracking metrics for different content types in one report. You can use GA4—again via the Pages and Screens report—to figure out which content types work by analyzing metrics such as video play duration, page scroll depth, and number of downloads.

Regardless, you’ll be producing a variety of content to serve the funnel. GA4 is effective at measuring all of it, so you’re not wasting resources creating gated eBooks few people download or videos few people watch.

GA4 Drives Content Marketing Results

Data is essential to content marketing. It helps identify the topics that will help your target audience do their jobs better (B2B) or improve their lives (B2C).

GA4 has been 11 years in the making and is built for our data-driven culture. So, it behooves all marketing teams to take advantage of GA4 for the most targeted content strategy possible.

To stay informed on what’s coming in MarTech, subscribe to The Content Strategist for more insight on the latest news in digital transformation, content marketing strategy, and rising tech trends.

The post Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Ready for GA4? appeared first on Contently.

Audio stories are different from any other medium for this very reason. Podcasts are used by several influencers, industry experts, and entertainment artists to share perspectives, ideas, and unique insights with a target audience.

So how do podcasts fit into your content marketing strategy?

The Power of Content Marketing & a Great Podcast

As content marketing continues to evolve and adapt to changing consumer behaviors, it’s essential to stay ahead of the curve and explore new ways of reaching and engaging with your audience. And podcasts offer an exciting opportunity to do just that.

Podcasts are a way to educate your consumers on important topics and provide thought leadership to the marketplace. Hubspot recently released the Hubspot Podcast Network for professionals looking to build their skills in different areas of business.

Other businesses choose to find a thought leader to host their own podcast and sponsor them. Whether they pay to have an ad included at the beginning of a podcast, ask an influencer to hype up a product during their podcast, or pay for time to speak to the partner podcaster’s audience directly, there are several profitable ways to leverage podcast sponsorships. In fact, Influencer Marketing Hub reports that 60% of listeners search for a product after it’s been mentioned on a podcast.

Creating your own branded podcast

Whether you are in finance, healthcare, insurance, or entertainment, podcasts can be a great place to focus on thought leadership and brand awareness. The best podcasts do this organically by using hosts with subject matter expertise in a specific industry to talk about topics the audience genuinely cares about.

Take NerdWallet, for example. Sean Pyles hosts the Smart Money Podcast for a user base that wants to learn how to eliminate debt, build savings, and start their investment journey. This makes sense for their business model since they have an app that helps their users track their money and make smart personal finance decisions.

This can also be a great opportunity for partnership with other brands, which NerdWallet does well, too. From credit cards and travel to personal loans, mortgages, and insurance, NerdWallet partners with a variety of industry leaders to highlight the best financial products for their audience. Talk about a great place for financial organizations to advertise their services.

From building brand awareness to driving traffic and boosting engagement, content marketing podcasts can be a game-changer for your business. According to Claritas, podcasts can lift brand awareness between 24-79%, depending on the industry. That’s 30x the average of other channels. Claritas evaluated 158 campaigns over 36 months, resulting in 834 million impressions. They found the following brand awareness lift based on industry:

• Retailers: 79%
• B2B: 77%
• Consumer goods: 63%
• Pharmaceuticals: 37%
• Automotive: 30%
• Telecommunications: 26%
• Insurance: 24%

What makes a good podcast?

Podcasts are one of the most popular forms of content consumption today, but it does take some skill to create a podcast worthy of listeners. If you’re going to integrate podcasts into your content marketing strategy, make sure that you have the following attributes:

• Compelling content: Start by selecting relevant topics for your target audience. Good podcasts have interesting and engaging content that keeps listeners coming back for more. The topic, storytelling, and quality of research or interviews should all be well thought out.
• Quality audio: Poor audio quality can be a major turnoff for listeners, so it’s essential to invest in good recording equipment or work with professionals who can help produce high-quality sound.
• Consistency: Maintain a consistent schedule so listeners know when to expect new episodes. This means releasing new episodes regularly, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly.
• Authenticity: A good podcast is authentic and genuine, reflecting the personality and style of the hosts or guests. Authenticity helps build a connection with the audience and makes the show more relatable and engaging.
• Audience engagement: Invite feedback, questions, and comments to understand your audience. This will help you understand what they want and create content relevant to them in future episodes.
• Marketing: Promote and market your podcast to the right audience. You can use social media, email lists, or partnerships with other podcasts or media outlets. The best content in the world won’t get an audience if people don’t know about it.

Why Use Podcasts in Your Content Marketing Strategy?

When integrated into a larger content marketing strategy, podcasts can help establish a brand’s authority, build customer trust, and drive traffic and engagement across multiple channels. By incorporating podcasts into a content marketing plan, businesses can create a more cohesive and integrated approach that leverages multiple touchpoints to reach and engage with their audience.

Whether used as a standalone content format or as part of a broader multi-channel approach, podcasts can help to amplify your message, increase your reach, and build lasting connections with your target audience. Starting a podcast as part of your marketing strategy can offer a range of advantages for your business, including:

• Building brand awareness: Podcasts can help increase your brand’s visibility and awareness, as they offer an opportunity to showcase your expertise and thought leadership on a specific topic or niche. According to BBC, podcasts that include brand mentions deliver, on average, 16% higher engagement and 12% higher memory encoding than the surrounding content. This is unique to podcasts since global radio benchmarks score 5% lower.
• Connecting with your audience: Podcasts can effectively build a personal connection with your audience, as they allow you to communicate directly with them in a conversational tone, building trust and rapport.
• Creating valuable content: Podcasts allow you to provide your audience with valuable, informative content that they can listen to at their convenience, which can help to position your business as a valuable resource.
• Driving traffic: By promoting your podcast on various channels, you can drive traffic to your website or other content platforms, increasing the visibility of your brand and attracting new leads. In fact, Morning Brew reports that podcast ad revenue surpassed $1 billion last year and is expected to grow in 2023 and 2024.
• Leveraging multiple channels: By incorporating podcasts into your larger content marketing strategy, you can amplify your message and reach a wider audience across various channels, including social media, email marketing, and search engine optimization.

Integrate Your Podcast Into Existing Marketing Campaigns

Podcasts need their own promotional strategy to perform. What’s your great content worth if no one hears it? When you start planning for your new podcast, set your goals early. Align them with the company’s overarching marketing strategy and decide which channels to promote your new content. Work with demand generation to create promotional assets to let your audience know what to expect.

Podcasting is a versatile and cost-effective form of content marketing that can be used as part of a larger strategy to drive engagement and boost your brand’s growth. Combining podcasting with other mediums, such as blogging, social media, and video, creates a cohesive, multi-channel approach to help you reach your marketing goals.

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Right now, everyone’s talking about generative AI and how it’s transforming content and design. But there’s more on the tech horizon than AI. If you’re not already thinking about how augmented reality (AR) can play a role in your content marketing, you should be.

What is Augmented Reality?

Any time you use software or a device to add new sights, sounds, or sensory stimuli to something you see, that’s AR. This is different from virtual reality (VR), which creates an entirely new and immersive world to interact in, like the metaverse or other VR games. Think of AR as sprinkles on a cupcake. It doesn’t alter the entire cupcake; it just makes it more… festive.

One of the first wildly popular and well-known uses of AR is the game Pokemon Go. It’s basically a scavenger hunt IRL (in real life) that uses your smartphone’s camera and geolocation to hunt down different Pokemon hiding around your town. Ever used a filter on TikTok or Instagram? You’ve experienced augmented reality firsthand.

The Case for Augmented Reality

AR has a life outside of entertainment. In a 2019 Nielsen IQ global survey, consumers listed augmented and virtual reality as the top tech they expect to help them in their daily lives. Half of those surveyed were willing to use it to help them choose products.

This is good news for businesses and their marketing teams. Not only are consumers willing to consider using augmented reality in their decision-making process, but AR increases the opportunity for personalization by combining it with consumer data, AI, product recommendations, offers, content, and more.

AR made strides into brick-and-mortar businesses during the pandemic lockdown. Since people couldn’t come into the stores, the stores had to find a way to go to them, and augmented reality was an ideal avenue.

And like remote work, Zoom meetings, and flexible hours, AR isn’t going anywhere in our post-pandemic society. It’s a disruptive technology primed to change how buyers shop and interact with brands. In 2017, the Harvard Business Review said every business would need an AR strategy. AR allows brands to extend their reach to consumers outside the traditional digital space and become part of their daily lives.

3 Ways to Use Augmented Reality in Marketing and Business

Augmented reality is having a field day in the marketplace, and smart marketers are looking to jump on the bandwagon to take advantage of this emerging tech tool. It can drive more sales, help customers make decisions, and generate buzz around your product or service.

As you consider if AR is a good fit for your business, keep its three main uses in mind: entertainment, education, and evaluation.

1. Trying before buying.

Augmented reality allows consumers to “try” a product before buying it—all without leaving the comfort of their homes. As more consumers move to purchase online (or at least, online research), companies that utilize AR can give customers a chance to see how a product would work in their homes or even on them, lowering the risk to purchase.

Giving prospects this level of virtual access also lowers the risk for businesses by reducing items abandoned in shopping carts, fewer returns, and sealing the deal for those customers who may have been on the fence to purchase without this option.

Amazon, Wayfair, and Ikea use AR to see how a couch or a lamp looks in your room before you add it to your shopping cart. Beauty brands like Sephora, Ulta, and L’Oreal have created AR opportunities (in-store and online) where consumers can try makeup before purchasing.

Gucci, one of the first companies to allow people to try on sneaks virtually, now lets you purchase “digital-only” versions. They only show up in pictures or videos (as a filter) you take so that you can share them on social media. You can also unlock your sneaks to use on your Roblox character. (What a collab!)

Let’s look at bigger purchases consumers are starting to make online. Acura created an AR game to take their sports sedan for a spin in a virtual race against other test drivers. And in the ultimate “try it before you buy it,” SmartTek created an augmented reality experience for potential homebuyers to walk through full-scale houses without leaving the comfort of their current home.

2. Teaching how to use.

Augmented reality is having a moment in the medical and educational fields as it helps add an entirely new dimension to learning. It helps make complex ideas more concrete and can bring topics to life for students in and out of the classroom. Museums are even using AR to bring extinct animals back to “life.”

Brands can use AR to augment training and education for their customers as well as their team members. Create AR opportunities that show your customers how to use your products or even give them more information on the products they’re considering buying.

Hyundai was the first automaker to implement an AR owner’s manual in 2015. This gives owners how-to information for maintenance, repairs, and features. With a smartphone or tablet, 3D images or videos will pop up when users scan various areas of their vehicle (both under the hood and inside the cabin).

AR is transforming customer support centers by combining live videostreams with computer-generated images. This allows agents to show rather than (try to) tell customers how to fix their devices.

3. Keeping entertainment alive.

The most widely known use for augmented reality is in entertainment. Brands can leverage AR to generate excitement around a new product launch or service. As mentioned earlier, gaming is where AR really got its start in common usage. But entertainment goes well beyond a scavenger hunt. Adding entertaining AR can be as simple as creating a fun filter to be used on social that promotes your new product launch. Or, it can be a complex and immersive experience.

Netflix has used AR filters and ads to promote earlier seasons of Stranger Things. But for season 4, the media company created an in-person AR experience to get people talking. While the overall experience was wonky, buzz about the experiences (held in NYC, London, and San Fransisco) was exactly what the company needed—almost 287 million hours of the season were viewed in the opening weekend.

Pepsi, no stranger to innovative marketing campaigns, installed AR at a London bus stop to liven up a normally boring wait for the next bus. You know people were lining up to use this bus stop once the word got out.

Don’t Be Afraid to Play with Augmented Reality in Marketing

Augmented reality in marketing is still in the early stages of adoption—there’s a lot to iron out as it continues to take shape, especially around the conversations of consumer privacy and data collection. But that shouldn’t stop you from exploring what it might look like to integrate AR into your content marketing strategy.

While it still needs to be intentional and drive results, augmented reality in marketing has the ability to make mundane things a little more lively and improve personalization and interactions with your customers.

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The post How Innovative Marketers Are Using Augmented Reality to Engage Customers appeared first on Contently.

In its State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report, keyword research tool company Semrush surveyed 1,500 content marketers worldwide. Only a little over half had a documented content marketing strategy despite nearly all (97 percent) reporting that content marketing was a part of their marketing strategy. Among their ongoing challenges: attracting traffic to content, improving its SEO performance, and generating content ideas.

Fortunately, Google Trends is a free tool to help solve these challenges. It can help you deliver the best content consistently and creatively. Google Trends can help you figure out:

• The topics to address and the content you could create (what you can cook)
• How to time your content (when to cook what)
• Which keywords to play with and the kinds of content that will likely resonate with your audience (the right ingredients to use)

Selecting a Content Topic Worthy of Engagement

You want to feed your readers the content they’re most curious about, which directly ties to your brand. Peeking into keyword search is a great way to get on-the-money content ideas, giving you insights about what readers want to know.

Compare and contrast keyword terms to determine how popular yours might be. For example, this chart shows that “car repair” consistently gets more hits than “car maintenance,” likely because repairs are more urgent than routine maintenance.

To discover other related keywords that audiences use in search, look under “Related Topics and Queries.” You can see “car maintenance cost” and “car service” both do well. Related topics and queries can be especially helpful for identifying alternatives to keywords with a lot of competition for top positions in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Such long-tail keywords found through Google Trends are easier to rank for.

Toggle “Rising” queries vs. “Top Queries,” and you’ll find the search terms gaining traction. Spotting and capitalizing on these trends early, especially in a B2C market, will help you ride the popularity wave while it crests. Be careful to time your activities.

Fads can crash quickly, and prospective consumers will tire of a topic if it’s seen too much air time before you’ve gotten to it.

Google Trends also enables you to parse search results by geography for further segmentation, which is useful for targeted pay-per-click campaigns. Look to Google Discover on mobile devices to sift for more contextual ideas.

Use Data to Target Your Audience at the Right Time

Successful content strategy is not just about discovering what topics and angles to cover; it’s also about targeting your customer at the right time. Use Google Trends to find keyword phrases relevant over long and short periods.

You can start from 2004 (which is how far back Google lets you go) and measure trends over a year, a month, or even a few hours. The latter is useful if you’re playing with rapid-fire breaking news—though this is rarely the case with B2B content marketing.

This screenshot shows the rise in searches about ChatGPT, an AI-driven language generation robot. While there were small blips in October and November 2022, it caught on like wildfire in December. Breakout trends like these might be worth harnessing, especially if you’re in the B2C market.

A note of caution: You always need an original point of view, especially when the web is filled with content addressing the same topic.

Watching trends play out over time can help your content strategy as you observe peaks and troughs for certain keywords. For example, do certain keywords trend as you approach Earth Day in April? Plan content calendars in advance so you can develop fresh takes every year.

Optimize Your Content on the Right Channels

Successful content uses relevant keywords and presents them in a format that suits the goals of the asset. If your strategy is not limited to written content alone, understanding what kinds of searches to optimize for (news, videos, etc.) will help. Toggle through the other options on Google Trends (Image Search, News Search, etc.) to find what kinds of content are doing well. It might spark ideas for diversifying your content buckets in the future.

Much like cooking, sometimes content strategy requires understanding how well existing content (listicles, blog posts) is performing and how you can repurpose them in new ways. You can also use Google Trends to get inspiration for adjacent categories by looking under the “Related Topics” widget. A related topic for the “Chat GPT” search term, for example, is “artificial intelligence.”

Google Trends can also help you keep tabs on your competition’s content efforts. Enter Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola in the comparison search boxes, and you can tell the cola wars are steady as ever. If your company’s search trend pattern dips compared to others, you may need to refresh your awareness-building efforts.

Research Google Trends for Content Topics with Reach

Google Trends is a helpful tool for identifying content marketing topics that have reach. Careful menu planning still doesn’t guarantee a great meal, however. Delivering consistent content that resonates requires you to understand your audience and audit content regularly to find the top performers.

Use your best judgment. If a keyword term is tired and used often, try and test new topics and approaches. There’s no substitute for well-produced content that is useful, resonates with your readers, and effectively positions your brand. It’s a tried-and-tested recipe that propels your content marketing strategy on the path to success.

To stay informed on all things content, subscribe to The Content Strategist for more insight on the latest news in digital transformation, content marketing strategy, and rising tech trends.

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Where can you find AI in marketing technology?

Pretty much everywhere.

MarTech platform providers took a bet that marketers would be some of the earliest and most active adopters of AI in the enterprise. As a result, they have been embedding AI and ML capabilities into marketing technology platforms to enhance features and functionality.

That doesn’t mean your organization uses AI broadly and deeply in marketing. It does mean you probably have more AI functionality available than you realized—even in your content marketing technology.

For example, if your company uses an email-serving platform or service provider, chances are the platform has AI-based predictive analytics to identify which recipients will open a message based on its subject, day of send, and time of send, among other factors.

Advertising is another area of marketing where predictive AI has become quietly embedded into the core AdTech solutions that enable companies to optimize ad placement with more effective targeting and bidding.

Personalized product offers, subject line optimization, and customer data preparation and analysis—all of these applications depend on AI in the relevant layer of marketing technology, and they are all becoming mainstream in marketing.

Let’s look a bit deeper into where they are showing up.

AI Helps Predict a Customer’s Next Action

You’re probably familiar with sentiment analysis. This is the practice of understanding consumer attitudes and opinions using technology. It works with natural language processing (NLP) AI that “reads” or “listens” to what consumers say in product reviews, in conversations with customer support personnel, on social media, and in survey responses. It then analyzes those conversations to understand consumer attitudes about the brand.

The next step after understanding what the customer thinks today is to predict where those sentiments will lead them tomorrow.

Using predictive analytics from AI, businesses can use what they learn from sentiment analysis to broadly improve the customer experience. Examples include:

• Enhance customer service processes to solve the customer’s problem before they have it.
• Adapt product innovation roadmaps to pilot functions that AI predicts will be in high demand.

Content marketers, for our part, can use customer sentiment to inform content plans and ad spending in a way that prioritizes the channels, content formats, and subjects that AI predicts will be top-of-mind for customers in the near future.

Understanding customer attitudes and intentions doesn’t just apply to B2C companies, either. B2B companies can also access customer sentiment data for their target market. The information can help you understand your market reputation (or if anyone knows about you at all). It can also analyze the behavior of prospects in your target market to predict when they have started looking for a solution like yours.

Marketers today have options in the MarTech solutions they use to identify leads and understand sentiment. Example marketing technologies include:

• B2B “account-based marketing” platforms like 6sense and Demandbase include predictive intelligence that allows sales and marketing to deliver a focused and personalized sales experience for a selected set of targeted enterprise accounts.
• Marketing automation platforms like Adobe’s Marketo, HubSpot, Oracle Eloqua, or Salesforce also include embedded AI analytics capabilities, including predictive “lead scoring.” Think of this as a quality rating that allows you to predict how likely a given lead will become a customer in your market (so sales can focus more human activities on high-potentials and less on ambivalent prospects).

Personalization Will Reach New Heights With AI

As a content person, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how the AI embedded in content marketing technologies can also help get the right content in front of the right customer to improve the customer experience—in other words, to personalize it.

The most straightforward application of AI for optimizing the customer experience is content personalization. This capability uses the data and information a company has collected about their customer or prospect to predict what content they would find most valuable—and deliver it.

Content personalization solutions include PathFactory and On24. There is also content personalization functionality embedded in platforms like HubSpot and Demandbase.

The Takeaway: Don’t Limit Your AI Experiments

Research by Deloitte and McKinsey finds that organizations taking the lead in AI value creation adopt a strategic and comprehensive approach. It’s not just a point solution for them. And while content marketers can only control the AI deployed in their area of influence, be aware of AI’s influence across the entire customer journey. It may help you fine-tune your content approach and get key assets in front of the right prospects.

Stay informed! Subscribe to The Content Strategist for more insight on the latest news in digital transformation, content marketing strategy, and rising tech trends.

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When voice recognition technology first became popular, consumers used it to have funny conversations with AI or ask their Bluetooth speakers to play their favorite songs. People still do that, even as they increasingly turn to voice search technology for answers to their questions. Voice search enables instant gratification, providing an answer in seconds for about 94 percent of all search queries.

What does voice search mean for content marketers in 2023? We have four takeaways. But first, let’s connect the dots between voice search and digital marketing.

Voice Search & Digital Marketing: What’s the Connection?

The mainstreaming of voice search means that digital marketers need to adapt their digital content to make it voice-search friendly so they can rank in voice search results.

Don’t panic—that doesn’t mean you need to abandon your current practices and re-write everything on your site. Basic search engine optimization (SEO) principles still apply to voice searches. SEO is all about writing for the customer and creating content that answers burning questions. That core concept remains the same, though voice search does affect SEO in one way—length.

When consumers use voice search (compared to regular text search), they typically ask longer, more precise, and more conversational questions. Voice search queries average 29 words, and those questions are often situational and specific. As a consequence, you need to optimize your content to ensure rank in voice search results.

4 Ways to Make Your Content Marketing Voice Search Friendly

Use these strategies to rank higher in voice search results.

1. Partner with your organization’s digital marketing team.

For anything SEO-related, the content and digital marketing functions must be in lockstep. Voice search is no exception.

Aligning your marketing team around the same goals is one way to promote collaboration. If you include voice search rank results as a quarterly goal for your team, then each sub-function will come up with relevant actions toward that goal. There may be some overlap between content and digital marketing. Working together will yield maximum results.

While digital marketing and content marketing’s responsibilities vary widely across organizations, it’s essential for both functions to understand SEO best practices. In that way, multiple people on the marketing team can collaborate throughout the content development process to drive the best results.

Be sure to partner with digital marketing experts to create paid and other forms of digital content optimized for web search.

2. Optimize for featured snippets.

Featured snippets, or highlighted pieces of text that appear at the top of a Google results page, are your golden ticket toward getting more organic traffic to your site. Often referred to as “Position 0,” featured snippets deliver such a perfect answer to a query that the user doesn’t scroll any further down the page.

When it comes to voice search, featured snippets are even more important. Most of the time, Siri pulls the answer to a question directly from Google’s featured snippet.

Note, however, that Google’s algorithm is constantly changing, which means that the most effective strategies will also change. As of now, however, consider these strategies for getting your content in the coveted featured snippet spot:

• Explicitly answer the question users search for.

• Use SEO tools like Semrush to identify target keywords with a featured snippet and create content specifically to rank for that snippet, answering burning questions and satisfying search engines alike.
• Write valuable, readable, and targeted SEO-optimized content to out-rank your competitors.
• Organize your content so that human readers and search engines can easily scan it. Use headings that include your target keyword, listicles, etc.
• Follow SEO best practices, like including the target keyword in your meta description, using internal and external links and optimal URL structure, etc.

Tip: To stay on top of trends, read SEO-specific publications like Search Engine Journal as a part of your routine.

3. Write content that answers questions.

This might seem obvious, but the more you tailor your content to answer a user pain point or question, the more likely it is to end up in the top rank of the voice search results page.

Writing question-based content forces you to step back and ask yourself, “Does the content I’m writing serve a customer’s need or is it purely serving a marketing objective?” It’s a great litmus test during content brainstorming.

Answering questions, rather than only providing information, is also a key way to show up in voice search. When people use it, they often ask questions such as, “What’s the weather like today?” or “Can my dog eat celery?”

Let’s dive deeper and examine the “People also ask” section in Google SERP results. When you type a question into Google, a box often pops up with four similar questions. This appears either directly after the featured snippet or after one or two organic results.

By following best SEO practices for a particular keyword and writing targeted, question-focused content, you can build your credibility and eventually show up in the “People also ask” section. For this section, it’s important to check out related searches and see what questions show up. Ask yourself, “How can I tailor content to answer the audience’s original question and any follow-ups they might have?”

4. Create mobile-friendly content.

Most voice searches come from mobile devices. In fact, 27 percent of the global online population uses voice search on their mobile phone. If you want to rank for voice search, you need to make sure your website and content are as mobile-friendly as possible.

This is another instance where collaboration with the digital marketing function is essential. Together, content and digital marketers need to optimize the website for mobile and create content that’s easy for users to engage with on their devices.

A few tips to help you optimize your content for mobile include:

• Create short, catchy, and concise content pieces
• Use statistics and design elements to set your content apart from competitors
• Create visuals that adhere to responsive web design
• Make your CTAs obvious
• Chunk content into short paragraphs
• Use snappy headings for readability

Looking Ahead: The Future of Voice Search

If the past few years are any indication, voice search isn’t going anywhere. In 2023, expect more consumers to gravitate toward the convenience and value of using devices on the go to get answers in seconds.

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As countless marketing messages flood email inboxes, McKinsey research suggests 71% of customers expect the messages they receive from brands to be personalized—and 76% are frustrated when they’re not.

Personalization takes many forms. A brand could remember the last item a repeat visitor bought and suggest a complementary product or offer a loyalty discount based on purchase history.

That might be a piece of cake for brands with a small number of customers to serve. It is much harder for enterprise brands with millions of consumers. For them, personalization requires technology. Not even the world’s best data scientists could keep up with that amount of information on their own.

Personalization is all about relevancy to the customer. Are you providing them with the information they need when they need it on the channel they’re searching for it?

McKinsey estimates there are billions of dollars waiting for organizations that can strategically implement hyper-personalization at scale. In fact, the organizations in the top quartile of performance using personalized communications will generate over $1.7-$3 trillion in value over the coming years.

What are the benefits of personalization at scale?

Marketers have been trying to master personalization since the dawn of the Internet. The first approach to collecting the data needed to personalize experiences leveraged web browser tracking tools and third-party cookies.

These efforts were, in some ways, motivated by the need to serve customers who increasingly demand more relevant and personalized experiences. Tech innovations and business growth goals have driven marketers to engage more often over more channels, resulting in digital overwhelm. Consumers can’t leave the house without seeing an ad. In fact, they don’t even have to leave the bed in the morning so long as they wake up with a smartphone charged and ready on the bedside table.

Everyone with a web connection knows brands are blasting customer inboxes and social feeds with marketing messages. It gets annoying—and no one wants to annoy their customers. So how do you break through the noise? Become more relevant.

McKinsey research found that 76% or more customers will recommend a brand and purchase or repurchase from a brand that offers a personalized experience. Personalization makes customers feel seen, heard, and understood. Isn’t that what we all want as humans? And for those metric-minded folks, it should matter to you too. When brands don’t take steps to make the experience relevant, it results in lost customers.

How do brands achieve personalization at scale?

Customer data is vast and complex, especially when you consider all the work that goes into capturing, maintaining, and leveraging it. And data is essential, my friends.

When you capture, track, maintain, and leverage your data, you have the keys to the relevance kingdom! Data tells you what your customer wants and needs and how you can help (at least for the problems your business can solve). But data also requires sound rules and governance to ensure you follow consumer privacy laws.

Easy, right? Only if you’re a fan of 1000-piece puzzles… that are double-sided. First-party data can help.

1. First-Party Data

First-party data is the information you get directly from your audience, whether that’s your customers, site visitors, or social media followers. The information could include demographic information, behavioral interactions with your brand site or product, social conversations, purchase history, and more.

First-party data is more important now than ever, given that browsers will soon discontinue third-party tracking cookies. While Google was the first to make the announcement and the slowest to implement this change, it’s important to consider how it will affect your marketing campaigns. How will you incentivize customers to share their information with you?

Content gating has historically been the most popular way to encourage customers to provide information, but it’s quickly becoming a deterrent. You want your content to be read and get that engagement; free content is becoming more and more relevant.

Don’t fret. There are other ways to obtain customer information. You can get emails through newsletter subscriptions, discount promotions, or virtual event registrations. The key here is to provide value in exchange for data.

2. Integrated Technology

You also want to ensure all your automation tools work together and talk to each other, so you have consistent information across platforms. For example, if you use Salesforce for managing sales campaigns and Hubspot for marketing, make sure there is an API connection between them, so sales can use the data from Hubspot to make more informed decisions.

Every touchpoint in the customer journey matters. Whether a visitor comes to your site for information or if they add an item to their shopping cart, it’s important to track each interaction all the way to a purchase.

Given the wide volume of customers and the vast array of interactions brands have with them, tracking would be impossible without the help of an integrated MarTech stack. Make sure your tools coordinate for the benefit of your lead funnel. Your sales team will thank you, I promise.

3. Talent

You’ve got the data; you’ve got the tech—now you need the talent. You may already have the skills you need on your team, or you may need to hire more people to take on the day-to-day personalization initiatives. One thing is certain: if you use personalization correctly, the extra personnel spend will return multi-fold to your business.

If you’re sifting through old data in a customer database, hiring someone up to the task might be best. Whether this person is a part-time consultant or a full-time manager who will oversee the day-to-day of your personalization strategy, you want someone who has technical expertise with your platforms.

The ideal candidate is well-versed in business intelligence, data analytics, lead qualification models, and API calls to connect your systems. They’ll likely partner with your head of marketing and your head of sales and sit within the marketing operations team.

4. Process

Once you’ve got your data, tech, and talent, the next step is to create a process that will help you not only create your data collection plan but figure out how to categorize it, qualify leads, and maintain the data so all the right parties have access to the information they need.

This complex process requires dedicated people to analyze customer data to find patterns, signify important demographic information, and create a qualification process that can help your marketing and sales teams identify the right fit for your product or service.

Hubspot Properties has a feature that highlights each known contact’s interaction with your brand. You can integrate this feature and functionality with Salesforce as well.

5. Leverage, Maintain, & Optimize

Once your setup is complete, it’s time to leverage your data to create better content for your prospects. Data from your customer journeys can also inform campaigns to target prospects more strategically.

Be sure you always maintain the connections between applications in your MarTech stack. Updates to one platform can disrupt integrations, so make sure you have a process in place to ensure your data makes its way into the lead funnel.

Finally, optimize your campaigns based on performance. Humans are complicated—at least, that’s been my experience. We sometimes don’t even know why we do the things we do. So predicting and analyzing behavior is a psychological experiment. Welcome to marketing.

Once you gather data on your ideal customer, optimize your approach based on the trends you see for specific prospects—for example, by updating your content campaigns or persona-based nurture streams.

No matter your approach, personalized experiences are crucial for developing continued customer engagement and loyalty. Make sure you have the right data, tools, talent, and processes in place to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

To stay informed on all things content, subscribe to The Content Strategist for more insight on the latest news in digital transformation, content marketing strategy, and rising tech trends.

The post Why Personalization at Scale Can Make (or Break) Your Business appeared first on Contently.

G2, the world’s leading business software review platform, can help answer that question. Each quarter, G2 publishes reports and gives Best of Software Awards accordingly.

G2 Winter 2023 Reports Are Here

The G2 Winter 2023 reports are published, and Contently is proud to rank as the leading content marketing platform in several categories.

View G2’s Winter 2023 Reports >>

For the 9th time in a row, Contently ranks number one in the Enterprise Grid® for Content Creation Software.

In this quarter’s report, Contently is a Leader based on having the highest:

• Number of Reviews
• Customer Satisfaction
• Market Presence
• Overall G2 Score

G2 ranked platforms on this grid by customer satisfaction (based on verified user reviews) and market presence (based on market share, seller size, and social impact). So, enterprise companies that utilize Contently are more satisfied than customers of any other content marketing platform. Plus, our platform has the largest market share and industry impact.

Customers rate their satisfaction in G2 reviews, so Contently is glad our satisfaction rates rank so highly with our clients:

• Likelihood to Recommend, 93 percent — Only four out of five dentists recommend certain toothpastes, but more than nine out of ten users recommend Contently.
• Best Meets Requirements, 92 percent — Contently’s platform helps marketers check off all their boxes internally when managing approvals and compliance.
• Ease of Doing Business With, 96 percent — Contently’s onboarding program helps you realize benefits as early as the kick-off call.
• Quality of Support, 95 percent — Reviews credited our Customer Success team for being dedicated partners every step of the way.
• Ease of Use: 91 percent — Smart content planning tools and automated recommendations help users make quick decisions backed by data.

We love our customers, and our customers love us.

Our customers also love the Contently platform features, as evidenced by their overall ratings:

• Customizable Template Workflows, 93 percent — Ensure compliance and process adherence through easily created, smart workflows that keep your team on track.

• Editing and Approval Tools, 90 percent — Move from a linear approval process to a more fluid system that suits your company’s individual needs with Contently.
• User, Role, and Access Management, 91 percent — Contently provides five user roles with different permission settings that each user can have, tailored to your content team:
  1. Owner: An account administrator who can see and do anything.
  2. Manager: A user who can write, edit, and review content from other users as well as their own.
  3. Collaborator: A user who can approve submitted stories or request revisions. Usually, this role is for members of your marketing or legal team who need to review stories before they’re published.
  4. Observer: A user with access to all stories but can only perform a limited set of actions (e.g., submit pitches, comment on pitches and stories, upload story assets).
  5. Contributor: Often a freelancer who produces stories based on the content brief.

Contently Is Leading the Pack

The G2 Winter 2023 reports also rank Contently above our competitors. For example, although this competitor has more overall customer reviews than Contently, our product ratings rank above theirs in several key areas.

We already touched on some of the features above, but for a couple of those we have not:

• Calendar: Contently’s intuitive drag-and-drop calendar gives you complete visibility into the state of your content program across the organization. Easily filter by function, line of business, format, tags, and more. Simply put, it’s an editor’s dream.

• Has the product been a good partner in doing business? — There’s a reason Contently is the secret content weapon of the world’s most valuable enterprise brands. As the latest G2 reports and awards confirm, Contently’s content marketing platform makes it easy to create high-performing content and measure its impact down to the dollar. We’ve spent the last ten years helping the world’s most valuable brands grow by telling stories people love.

Our enterprise content marketing platform turns modern marketers into content superstars.

Cross-functional content calendars, campaign centers, and in-platform strategy tools align teams to create incredible content that performs.

Request a free content consultation to learn how our powerful enterprise content marketing technology and world-class talent network can help you create better content faster.

The post Contently Gains New Momentum in G2 Winter 2023 Campaigns appeared first on Contently.

Where do Chief Content Officers fall in the hierarchy?

Creative teams, made up of copywriters, graphic artists, videographers, web designers, and more, are usually under the brand function of enterprise organizations. Many companies diversify their structure by creating content teams under a demand generation function of marketing as well.

When you think of content marketing, you probably think of multi-media influence across mediums. It’s an omnichannel experience, and content marketers must rise to the challenge of communicating with their target audience in a personalized, meaningful way to engage and delight them. The reward? Their interest, following, engagement, and (hopefully) conversion to a customer. If you do it right, you gain trust, loyalty, and advocacy for your brand. For this reason, content creators typically fall under the marketing function, and marketers are often led by Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs).

Since 56% of Chief Content Officers have been appointed since 2016, the hierarchy within each organization might look different. At some, a CMO will lead the marketing department and hire a VP of Content Marketing to run content strategy and production. At other organizations, CMOs and CCOs both have a seat at the executive table. So, why isn’t Chief Content Officer a more prominent title? Well, it’s the same reason that CMOs are finding it harder and harder to maintain their executive presence.

What CMOs and CCOs currently lack

CMOs are falling behind their peers when it comes to tech adoption and data-driven strategy. That’s because our world is rapidly evolving, and technology is reshaping the way we approach business. While marketers have adopted technology that helps optimize their campaigns, they are slower to adopt more advanced technology for a few reasons. The first is their budget. A CMO’s budget is usually not as high as some of their counterparts, making it difficult to adopt more expensive technologies at scale to showcase the value-add it would provide to their teams. In addition, marketers house several creatives who are worried about the impact of AI and machine learning on their creative skillset. Finally, marketers have one of the most difficult jobs when it comes to proving brand awareness, attributing prospect engagement to marketing spend, and showcasing the ROI that is directly derived from creative content. Why? It all comes down to one major problem… Humans are complex creatures.

Sounds like brands just need to set up more Match profiles, right? How well has online dating worked for you? Same concept here. Market research is extremely helpful for strategy and execution, but again… what works for one person won’t work for someone else. We all have unique needs and desires. Go figure. No wonder both dating and marketing are so difficult.

So, why aren’t Chief Content Officers a bigger “thing”? Well, I’d argue it comes down to showcasing value—specifically, value down to the dollar. How much is the ROI for investment in expensive brand awareness campaigns? What about that content budget to create hype videos, thought leadership blogs, branded podcasts, influencer webinars, etc.?

Becoming more data-driven with help from technology

Chief Content Officers are few and far between, but they are becoming more prevalent. While we can’t all be as cool as the first-ever CCO, Ann Handley of MarketingProfs, we can strive to achieve greater impact at our organizations by taking a more data-driven and human approach to our content. Great content comes from great research, expertise, and a commitment to quality. That’s why understanding your market is so important to content strategy, creation, and execution. You need to understand your audience and cater to their needs. And prioritizing personalized content at a rigorous scale requires a technology partner to help you do it. Let’s face it. The world isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Tech advancements aren’t either. As content marketers, we must be prepared to earn our seat at the table with data-driven strategy and tech-savvy processes that amplify our programs and create measurable impact.

How can you possibly do that, you ask? Well, we’re approaching a time where the Fly stage of our Content Maturity Model is necessary to move the needle. We need to adopt technology as our partners to scale our content programs and create more meaningful engagement with our targets.

Leverage AI to connect with individual consumers

Just imagine what you could do if you leveraged AI to help you understand the buyer’s journey of every individual customer. Michaels is a great example of hyper-personalization success. Susan is interested in purchasing 10 new easels for her art studio. She is a frequent shopper at Michaels and wants to see their prices. She searches online to see the different options and puts one in her digital shopping cart. Suddenly, Susan gets a message from her partner and exits her browser. She’s forgotten about the easels.

Marketers currently use retargeting to try and jog Susan’s memory. She may see Michaels put an ad on her Facebook feed or send an email with the Subject: Forget something? Your easel is waiting.

But let’s go back to when Susan put the item in her cart. Say she purchased it. How many people still get those ads showing the same product for purchase?

Now, what if Michaels knew Susan was interested in learning more about crafting? As a professional painter, she is passionate about her trade but wants to expand her studio to make it welcoming for everyone. Michaels hosts classes for different arts & crafts, teaching interested participants like Susan how to make wreaths, create jewelry, or frame portraits. What if we knew Susan well enough to know she’d inquired about a jewelry class at the same time she was looking to purchase those easels? Could we create a better opportunity to educate her on the new class Michaels offers for jewelry making?

CMOs and CCOs have an incredible opportunity here. It’s an opportunity to drive personal connection with their consumer through data-driven insights that were readily available to them directly from the consumer. So many of us can relate to poor personalized experiences with brands. We fill out a form online only to talk to a customer service agent who asks us to repeat ourselves. With AI-driven technology, marketers and content creators can take customer experiences to a whole new level. Just think of the customer satisfaction and what benefits you could gain from listening more intently to what your customers want from you.

An Opportunity for Data-Driven Strategy

Technology helps us leverage the data we have on our customers to create seamless buyer experiences and more authentic communications. Ultimately, Michaels wants to help Susan fulfill her dream of owning an inclusive art studio where everyone can find something to create. Michaels wants to be her loyal partner for both the training she wants to pursue and the supplies she needs to make her studio dream a reality. So, how can we create holistic consumer experiences the way Michaels wants to with Susan?

We must create consistent user experiences, leverage the consumer data we have to create more meaningful connections, and track the content each individual consumes throughout their buyer’s journey.

There are several tools on the market to help you achieve these goals. With PathFactory, you can create binge-worthy content experiences with tracks that line up content for consumption based on prior interest. Hubspot allows you to track email, social, and blog interaction and integrate with other platforms to understand the impact of your content throughout the buyer’s journey. You can also integrate UTMs into every piece of your content and connect it back to Salesforce campaigns to show click-throughs and catalog the dates they were accessed. Plus, you can identify how much you would spend in CPC and search to gain the same amount of engagement with Contently’s Content Value Tracker.

It’s a pivotal point in time for content marketers. It’s never been more important to showcase the impact of content, especially in the age of AI and digital transformation. We are at a turning point, and we can either embrace the change with open arms or let it overcome us. Those looking to become Chief Content Officers must prioritize data-driven insights and technology adoption to keep pace with their peers. It’s time to be a part of the conversation. It’s one that will influence the way businesses communicate in the future. It’s time to educate ourselves and level up our playing field so that CCOs are more widely known as an integral part of the C-Suite. We must understand the technology that powers our decisions and create strategies to drive greater impact for our organizations.

Stay informed on the latest content trends, industry insights, and news. Subscribe to The Content Strategist to receive weekly updates.

The post Why Isn’t Chief Content Officer a Bigger “Thing” Yet? appeared first on Contently.

For example, in-person conferences and hosted events are a big part of how LiveIntent builds relationships and generate leads. That was gone. We went from office dynamics to working from home every day. We went from in-person events to virtual ones. We were asked to cut the budget but not goals or expectations.

I feel fortunate, from a marketing perspective, that the year has been a good one—all things considered. As of today, we are on pace to hit our demand gen goals and have increased marketplace awareness of emerging products. With that said, I have certainly learned a lot about myself as a marketing leader that I will carry forward.

As we prepare for 2021 and think through budget, headcount, and strategy, here are five areas top of mind for me.

Remaining agile

This year reminded me of the importance of preparing for the unexpected. The fact of the matter is, we are still figuring out how remote work affects our ability as marketers. And we’re still dealing with new changes all the time.

A prime example was our 2020 hosted events plan. In years past, we used these events to network with customers and prospects, and showcase new product releases. Clearly, the pandemic impacted our ability to host these events.

Instead of turning away from them entirely, though, we launched a bi-weekly webinar series called “Real Time Banter” back in April. We talk to thought leaders from publishing and marketing, and invite listeners to ask questions live using the chat function.

As I work with our team to plan 2021, we will leave room each quarter for the unexpected.

Planning for more virtual events

Speaking of events, I firmly believe that all of 2021 will be virtual. We will not be committing any budget to events that are planned to be 100 percent in person.

With that said, we certainly don’t see the same ROI from virtual events. In our brainstorming and planning sessions, we are actively thinking through how to make up that gap while we continue to support the vital trade publications that put on these events in our industry. We view this as an opportunity to diversify our media spend by looking for platforms that help with awareness and inbound leads

Listening to customers more

It’s important to remember that our customers have also had an unsettling year. As they plan for 2021, there is a lot of uncertainty on their end. It’s always crucial to listen to your customers, but this should be magnified by 10x during an uncertain era. It’s the only way to stay in lock-step with customers to make sure we continue to build the products and provide the services they require.

Think tank sessions, customer surveys, and virtual discussions are a few effective ways to accomplish this. For example, we know that from surveying our publisher and advertiser clients about the impact that COVID has had on their business that:

• 73% of B2B marketers are increasing their investment in email.
• Almost 50% of publishers saw an increase in revenue from subscriptions and memberships.

Doubling down on content

As we think about 2021 going majority virtual, getting the right content into the hands of your customers and prospects at different stages of the marketing funnel becomes even more critical. Our plan is to double down on content marketing by increasing our staff and output. All marketing is digital now, which means content is a staple for product adoption, lead gen, SEO, thought leadership, social media, and more.

Along these lines, it’s important to consider the format in which the content gets delivered. Email has typically been our best content format. However, I’m excited to potentially test out some emerging formats like interactive research reports and animated explainers, as well as A/B testing the platforms we use to distribute the content.

Increasing organizational support

If you’re not following Mayur Gupta, you should. Mayur is one of the most thought-provoking marketers in our industry. He regularly engages the marketing community in conversations about the future of marketing and its impact on business. One of my favorite quotes he made is from a post about celebrating the impact of marketing, “..if the ‘Growth – Business – Measurable Impact – Insights – Analytics’ side of Marketing is what needs more VISIBILITY & AWARENESS, we need to tell those stories AS MUCH OR MORE”.

If your company is expected to grow year over year, then there needs to be infrastructural support for the marketing team. I want to ensure that every team member knows the marketing goals. They should know how the work they do contributes to every stage of the marketing funnel. And they should receive regular reports on the progress of everything going on.

We’ve dealt with so much change in 2020. But now that we’re more comfortable with being uncomfortable, we can put ourselves in a great position to succeed next year, regardless of what happens.

The post As a Marketing Leader, I’m Taking These 5 Actions to Thrive in 2021 appeared first on Contently.

By that, I don’t mean you can talk to me by dialing zero on a landline, or that I operate heavy machinery. Rather, I love bringing order to things. I love helping people and businesses reach their peak performance and be their absolute best.

I started my career as a financial analyst, but the last dozen years of my career have been spent in content, on the revenue side of the fast-changing digital media and marketing landscape. At Everyday Health, Dotdash, and most recently as chief business officer at Time Inc., I leaned hard into content services to transform the business and combat fast-receding, traditional revenue channels.

The digital revolution has delivered a whirlwind of changes, but one thing has remained constant: Content is the best way for companies to connect with people. Throughout the consumer journey, it’s the essential component to delivering on the promise of your brand.

As someone who values execution excellence above all else though, one thing has always pained me: the incredible level of content chaos inside enterprise organizations.

Content is a more complicated challenge than anyone realizes. It’s one thing to create a great Instagram video, one solid sales deck, or a single one-sheet. It’s an entirely other thing to create consistent, high-quality content that ladders up to business goals across all of your channels, lines of business, and geographies. Very few brands have figured it out—a big reason that the top 5 percent of branded content drives 90 percent of all engagement.

There hasn’t been a great solution to that chaos. On one end of the spectrum, agencies and native ad studios specialize in creating one-off series, content hubs, or social campaigns. On the other end of the spectrum, technology platforms offer a way to organize and measure pieces of your content program. But neither of these approaches solves the massive challenges enterprise organizations face.

Enterprises need an overarching content strategy to align their teams and empower them to create content that builds relationships with their audience. Then, they need technology to execute that strategy, saving them from the hell of spreadsheets and never-ending email threads. And finally, they need incredible creators who can help them compete with the millions of other stories buzzing in their audience’s pocket every second of every day.

I was obsessing over this issue a few months ago, when I got the call from the recruiter.

The founders of Contently wanted to talk to me. I knew of Contently—a fast-growing startup the world’s biggest brands are using to power their content programs. But then I learned more about their vision and offering: a solution that combines strategy, technology, and a global creative talent network to help brands tackle their core content ailments, not just individual symptoms.

Then, they asked me to become their new CEO. I said yes.

I’ve been working with the team for a month now, and I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity ahead of us. It’s an opportunity to usher in a new era for content marketing; one that’s not defined by what a company is (an agency, a content marketing platform, AI enabled technology) but rather by the problems it solves.

Internally, we’re calling this the Content Solutions Era. (Trademark pending.)

It’s not just our existing capabilities that make me believe we can usher in this age. It’s also the culture of innovation inside these walls. Contently is filled with creative, visionary people who care deeply for each other and our clients. There’s a hunger here to solve the increasingly complex challenges marketers face. Everyone is willing to experiment, innovate, and unearth uncommon solutions using the tools at their disposal: incredible content strategy expertise, powerful technology, and the highest-rated, most specialized creative talent network on earth.

Our work is just beginning. I’m thrilled to dive in and uncover all the ways we can help our clients, prospects, and the marketing community at large. And as an operator, I can’t wait to help you escape content chaos.

The post Why I’m Placing the Biggest Bet of My Life on Content appeared first on Contently.