Here are 10 trends to keep on your radar in 2022:
1. Quality, Relevance & Trust: average content just won’t cut it anymore as anti-spam initiatives as well as an increased focus on user experience continue to gain importance. Creators should focus on being authentic, building trust and showing empathy.
2. Understanding Consumer Intent: there is a renewed focus on not only what people are searching for, but the intent behind that search. The article suggests marketers work through their customer journey to find gaps, choke points and other opportunities for improvement.
3. Need For More Flexibility: There are so many touchpoints and customer interactions, marketers need more tools to help them analyze the data. In addition to the tools, marketers need to be flexible in 2022 and have processes in place that allow them to digest data and trends and pivot as necessary.
4. Further Alignment With SERPs & Google Guidelines: Its hard to convince Google your content is the best, but you can start by making sure to follow Google’s guidelines. From there “featured snippets, People Also Ask, video carousels, image results, Top Stories, and more all present opportunities to be seen,” according to the article.
5. Voice Over Volume: You need to produce content to stay ranked, but a purely volume-based approach is not the answer. It is important to focus on how to tell your brand’s stories in various formats and mediums.
6. Real-time Insights: Tracking behavior and trends in real time helps you form campaigns and “provides the fuel for real-time optimizations.” It allows you to make changes before the customer experience is impacted. The article suggested marketers “set up custom alerts to spot problems and opportunities as they happen.”
7. Autonomous Action: You don’t need a human standing by to act on real-time insights. “Using an AI-powered and machine learning-based technology enables you to set rules and conditions under which the tool will make optimizations in response to opportunities spotted in real-time, as well,” according to the article.
8. Fusion Of Formats: Whether its AR and VR, or audio and text, the melding of formats will help your audience more deeply connect with the stories you want to tell. Marketers should examine every story they plan to tell and examine how it can be augmented in an additional format.
9. Don’t Forget About the Art of Storytelling: It is important to balance out the science—metrics, automation, etc.—with creating content that makes a real connection with your audience.
10. Account-Based Marketing (ABM): This collaboration between sales and marketing is gaining importance in B2B. “Consumers are looking for seamless transactions and won’t put up with disconnection between what they’ve already learned or done through marketing content and the experience they have with sales,” according to the article.
