Watch The Video
Are you looking to step up your content marketing game in 2019?

Last year, content marketing took the digital advertising world by storm.

For good reason, too!

Consumers are craving authentic, personalized brand content. Every business owner can meet this demand with a clear content marketing strategy.

Effective content marketing, however, goes beyond mere amazing content.

It’s important to keep pace with the industry’s trends to stay ahead of your competitors.

Read further for insight into the top content marketing trends of 2019, or watch our quick summary below:

1. Streamlined Web Content

Your website is your ultimate digital marketing tool!

Your site plays a key role in delivering the first impression of your company to potential customers.

It’s also designed to educate website visitors.

Visitors aren’t interested in wandering around a website packed with useless content.

They want to visit your website deliberately. They want streamlined verbiage that can give them the answers they are seeking.

This isn’t far off from Google’s own stipulations for Google-friendly sites. It urges site owners to develop content that gives users what they want.

So, high-quality, streamlined web content can also have a hand in how highly you rank on search engines.

What do we mean by streamlined web content?

Streamlined content gets rid of any unnecessary fluff. It cuts straight to the chase. It is easy to navigate, clear to read, and 100% transparent.

If your website isn’t living up to these standards, it could cost you.

How to Integrate This Trend

Don’t weigh your visitors down with too much content. Give them the essentials only.

This doesn’t mean crafting a skimpy site. You can easily deliver your message in succinct pages organized with a simple navigation scheme.

In fact, you may even want to use a single-page website format. This includes all site content in one, scrollable page, making it easy for visitors to navigate between key sections.

Use visuals, headings, and bullet points to your advantage. Integrate larger fonts to enable easy skimming.

Integrate internal links wisely, thinking about a standard visitor’s journey from impression to conversion.

2. Long-Form Articles

Blogs took center stage in the content marketing world last year. They remain just as vital in 2019.

Marketers have recognized the value of incorporating blog posts on their sites. Blogs inform visitors, helping companies establish authority in a field.

They also offer marketers further material for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. You can share blog posts across multiple platforms, broadening a company’s digital reach.

However, blog post length will have a new spotlight this year. Successful marketers find that long-form (rather than short-form) posts have a higher payoff.

Specifically, blog posts or articles longer than 500 words are more likely to earn a click in search results. Ones that push (or even go beyond) 2,000 words may enjoy even more success.

Why is this?

Long-form articles don’t intimidate users. They can be broken into key sub-headings for easy skimming and organized in a reader-friendly fashion.

These articles are often info-dense. Remember the point we made about education customers?

Users are more likely to trust brands that can deliver a lot of information about a subject. They may spend more time with a 2,000-word piece accordingly.

How to Integrate This Trend

If you maintain a blog on your site, aim to generate posts that are longer than 500 words.

Prove your industry expertise on a certain subject by releasing long-form articles. Ensure that these are easy to read, too.

If you want to broaden your reach further, consider publishing long-form pieces on platforms like LinkedIn, which has a publishing feature.

Share this content on your website and across social media.

3. Video Content

Video is every content marketer’s ultimate tool. Why?

Simple. Video content is almost always engaging. It enables marketers to combine compelling imagery, audio, and messaging in a handful of seconds.

Plus, anyone can create a video. Even a clip shot on an iPhone can leverage a brand image and captivate followers.

Video was hot in 2018. It’s keeping its popularity this year for the same reasons, appearing on new platforms and in fresh capacities.

How to Integrate This Trend

Ensure that video content appears in at least one of your digital marketing campaigns. Integrate multimedia ads on Facebook, for example.

Or take advantage of Instagram’s story feature, which integrates ephemeral video content followers can enjoy.

Both Instagram and Facebook enable live video capacities. This encourages business owners to engage in real time with clients, a huge boon.

Video isn’t only central to social media marketing. You can embed video on your website itself and upload video blogs (vlogs) as well.

4. Brand Storytelling

Consumers are becoming more curious about the brands they follow. In fact, they are more likely to follow brands they can relate to.

Marketers can take advantage of this in 2019 by using brand storytelling.

This refers to telling a story about a specific brand. This narrative shouldn’t just be about how you got to where you are today.

Brand storytelling talks more about the experience your brand can offer specific customers.

It discusses the narrative behind your company’s success. It often mentions the obstacles faced before delivering an amazing experience to current customers.

These stories are designed to engage customers in a different capacity. Rather than strictly attempting to sell something, brand storytelling explains the “what” and the “why.”

It often brings emotion on board. This has the added effect of personalizing a specific brand, making it an experience rather than a product.

How to Integrate This Trend

It’s difficult to integrate brand storytelling if you haven’t already done so. There’s a difference between talking about yourself and talking about your brand’s story.

Once again, video content can be a great way to tell your brand’s story and captivate customers. Use video ads to quickly and succinctly engage with prospective clients.

You might want to incorporate a video on your website’s “About” page to accomplish the same goals.

Video blogs can also integrate little segments of brand storytelling. You can still inform your followers about relevant subjects while telling your brand’s story.

It’s possible to tell your brand’s story without relying on video.

Brand storytelling can occur in long-form social ads, many of which enable marketers to strike a conversational tone with users.

It can also happen in blog posts, articles, and your website content itself.

5. Original Content

The internet is absolutely saturated with ad content on a daily basis. After all, ads are how companies like Google and Facebook make most of their money.

With growing global access to the internet, the worldwide web is becoming a veritable marketplace for everything under the sun.

The problem with this ad-saturated market is precisely that:

Users are tuning out.

More importantly, they are picky about the content they focus on. They are skeptical of any ad content that seems deliberately sales-driven.

They prioritize content that is highly authentic. They really do want to see something they haven’t seen before!

When it comes to 2019 content marketing trends, original content tops the charts. Content marketers will see a huge push for 100% authentic content 100% of the time.

How to Integrate This Trend

This can be a tough trend to respond to.

How is it possible to be entirely authentic as a marketer in such a vast market?

Brand storytelling can help. Your brand is unique to your company alone.

We also recommend checking out your existing competition and brainstorming ways to surpass their content. What are your competitors doing to reach customers? How could you do this differently (and better)?

Try to get on your users’ level as much as possible. Understand your target market as precisely as possible.

Drop by public online forums like Quora to see what your ideal users are talking about.

Write about what they are talking about. The more you can engage intimately with who you are trying to reach, the more authentic your content will be.

6. Google Ads

Most marketers have become well-versed in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO enables all site owners to optimize their content for key search terms, boosting online visibility.

SEO isn’t everything in 2019, however.

Successful marketers will supplement existing SEO efforts with Google Ads campaigns.

Google Ads uses the same principles as SEO. It enables keyword-based ads to surface in key search results. Marketers pay per user click on each ad.

How to Integrate This Trend

First, be sure that your SEO game is on point. Launch an Ads campaign after conducting thorough keyword research.

Use it to supplement existing SEO efforts. The two should go hand-in-hand.

You may wish to hire a PPC campaign manager to assist, especially if the world of bids and keyword research seems daunting to you.

7. Brand Integrity

In the wake of data protection scandals, consumers are very careful about entrusting their information to certain brands.

Ad content this year is emphasizing brand integrity. This means drawing users’ eyes to a company’s values of transparency and authority.

Brand integrity also relates to data governance.

Companies may market their own ability to protect and respect customer data.

How to Integrate This Trend

Clarify your company’s data governance policies. Aim to promote content that is entirely transparent.

Cater to your users’ needs for brand integrity in your ad content itself, be it in the form of social ads, Google Ads, or email marketing.

Content Marketing Trends in 2019

Content marketing is a vital component of every successful digital marketer’s toolkit. Make sure you keep pace with these trends as the New Year begins.

Now you know all about content marketing trends for 2019.

But how do you bring these to life in your own company?

That’s where we come in. Learn more about the digital marketing consulting services we offer here!