Throughout my content marketing workshops and training courses this year, a number of CMO’s and business leads have asked me for my top content marketing predictions for 2015, so I wanted to put together my dedicated list for 2015 and beyond:
- Audio
- The rise and re-rise of podcasts will continue (thanks to serial) with supporting information and timelines being created to increase the desire for guided audio
- Snackable content has been coined in 2014 but dedicated snackable content should raise in 2015 again, Soundcloud, stitcher, iTunes and unamo have all helped in this and allows very busy people (and the non readers) to stay on top of their favourite content. I expect this to continue to increase and the quality being extremely high.
- Gifs: Use of gifs will increase and businesses will actively want to create more compelling and educational gifs (or should). Education, pharma and anything financial should look to create gifs to help educate and entertain your audiences.
- Long form content: a large number of people are predicting death of long form however I have seen if content is of high standards or written particularly well people will spend the time to read and enjoy the piece and increases the likelihood of reading other articles and coming back to the site. I expect this to continue especially with larger sites ramping up their writing staff and improving their editorial guidelines. Sites such as the Verge, Medium and even Buzzfeed have really raised the bar and expect this to continue in 2015.
- Video: I don’t mean long YouTube videos or really funny vine videos but video content that is interesting and answers questions very quickly. I think everyone wants to go into video but have been scared of costs or the message they want to put across, however there is no excuse in 2015 not to be able to produce good quality content for low costs.
- Collaborative efforts: like what works in music, writing and now popular YouTube videos I see many companies and writers joining forces and creating great collaborative content and far ahead of the typical “boring” B2B content.
- Mobile first content: we all know every year is the year of mobile however 2014 was the year mobile usage was the primary device for over 50% of users, there are two folds to mobile first IMHO:
A. Improved mobile experience – has to happen and all good business leads will be forcing their teams to create and improve the experience on mobile.
B. Mobile first – I think there will be many businesses and publishers will look to create mobile first content (so works on apps first, then their sites). Just remember 84% of time is spent on mobile apps over browsers. - Shorter social infographics: Infographics used to be expensive and became a SEO tactic, smaller much cheaper infographics. Infographics built for links will still happen but SEO and marketing teams need to understand infographics rarely generate top links you need or want.
As you might have noticed some of these predictions (or tips to some) are challenges to marketing departments and business as much as predictions.
For the wider industry I put together a quick deck highlighting where I think content marketing as an industry content marketing should (will) go into 2015 (hint expect expansion and structural change):
Happily let me know (in the comments or over on Twitter) what your predictions are for 2015.