In 2016, content was in supreme power expected to be delivered in the form of compelling, personalized and interactive stuff that can be rated well and ranked high in all search engines. Overall, the strategy of content marketing saw a significant shift in 2016 compared to a year ago. The year 2017 is predictable. Brands, big or small are slowly preparing themselves to deliver value added real-time contextual content with videos, images, GIFs and infographics.

Content creators and marketers get a chance to enrich their customers with a more personalized content, those that can add value to the brands and those that can stand out. The key point here is to keep appearing with different sets of quality content. But, the majority of the marketers are still lacking the confidence to take complete control of their contents. Campaigning such content is no doubt going to be complex.  Efficiency in creating contextual content, formatting them as per the need of their target audience, and distributing them through proper channel needs little homework.

Deliver Value; Business will Automatically Happen

Know Your Customer and Deliver Experience They Seek

Earlier, brands use to merely broadcast to a mass of audience about what they have and what best they can offer. Reach was accidental. Hope, believe, chance etc were the words that marketers use to rely on during that decade. Trends changed drastically over the years. In recent days, with social media marketing and other online marketing taking the upper hand, companies have a new rule to follow in this game. This digital transformation can have positive impacts on delivering personal experiences. They can now reach their existing customers and simultaneously build a new set of audience who show interest through targeted messages, visuals, and preferred contents. Joe Pine, a well-known author and lecturer, sees this move towards personal experience as a new beginning that has the capacity to bring consumers closer to the market. Marketers have a challenge now to consistently keep the audience informed and entertained. This trend is going to run throughout 2017 and may be further than that. So, exist where your customers are!!

Be Contextual and Generate Quality Leads

Marketers need to stop campaigning insensitive contents and stop being tone deaf. You need to hear your customers’ preferences and place your offerings based on several data insights and several other factors. Internet of things, connected devices etc are simplifying the campaign process as it lets marketers gain insights about the customers; their preferences; spending patterns etc.

Examine Contextual Clues Left For You

Marketing contextual content and showcasing your brand personality needs a tilted mindset. The trick lies in tracking the digital behavior of your customers. But once this process is done, it is easy for you to understand the preference of your customers and create content that people actually wish to search for. Contents that go to the social media channel can be tailored based on the type of channel too. The challenge is to be active both online and offline.

Keep the Customer at the Center

Inventive Contents

Prediction says that by 2020, 4billion people will be online. In future, consumers are going to be purely networked all time, considering the trend has already set in many parts of the world. Access to the networked audience is direct. Reach is more of search-centric. The reaction is quick and instantaneous. Publishing to such audience is easier as your content and communication can travel freely irrespective of border/ geographies and connect instantly. Marketers have to work on one brand positioning strategy that can go well with the global audience. Although this presents a huge opportunity, businesses need to work on a different level of operational tactics to understand the power of customers and to click with them instantly.

Sizing Contents As per Mobile-Only Consumers

Since smartphone ownership rates are increasing phenomenally, researchers indicate that soon we can see the percentage crossing 90% mark. The coming decade can see a substantial increase in the number of mobile-only internet users. This sure induces anxiety on every marketer as there is a need to prepare and assess the methodology to reach customers directly onto their mobile devices.

Contents are Well Discovered in Social Media

Social media adoption and usage are on the rise. This continuous growth of social media and the enormous number of people getting hooked to various social media platforms has paved way for easy promotion and distribution of contents. The latest report from Statista indicates around 2.34 billion social media users globally for 2016 and the number is indicated to touch 2.51 billion by 2017. Content developers and marketers need to understand the importance of generating fresh contents and simultaneously also understand the strategy behind the distribution of their contents. To make things simple, there are many social media management platform available which helps in managing the distribution of contents based on certain analytics to the right customer at the right time. The best way to get this done is to create the right impression with engaging contents and reach at the right time. Do not rush and get shabby, you need to time it well and be interesting. Social media managers and content developers need to strike a chord and work this out together. Identify the influencers as they have the authority in the social media dimension. For all you know, they can be the right bird that can draw the whole flocks!!!!

Content Creation Works Hand-In-Hand with SEO

By now, the majority of the content creators and marketers would have understood the importance of SEO – Search Engine Optimization. For all those, who still have not, then this is the right time to understand that SEO is alchemy. Contents need to have few factors that can generate signals in search engines. Search engines catch these signals quickly and mark such information with rewards and rankings.

• Produce quality content
• Have a reason which will grab the attention of your customers/users
• Offer value
• Focus on Keywords – Research on the search types of your customers and include such words in your contents.
• Be fresh
• If not overall, your content should have few factors that can create a vertical slice at least to the entire spectrum of interest.

Go Real-time

Real-time technology is interesting. It lets you reach your audience instantly and interact with them immediately after you publish your blogs, tweets or post a message. Such content allows you to portray yourself naturally, visually and at the same time also lets you pick clues from customers that can help you grow.

Learn, Iterate, and Innovate

Understand the technology. Commit to a quality and be consistent. The process will help you to learn your customers. Real-time is like rapid fire. They are too quick, instant. Size your communication well to keep yourself active and fresh. The coming years are going to be challenging. Be ready.

About the Author

Meenakshi Krishnan is a Content Consultant at OpenXcell, a pioneering Mobile App Development Company in India and USA. Technology inspires her and this has helped her author content on a variety of topics ranging from telecom, apps, healthcare communications and so on. She is currently working on global mobile app technologies reporting on diverse subjects. Prior to this, she was working for a technology marketing company based in Norwalk as a content contributor.