An amazing year comes to an end, complete with videos going viral, news-feeds getting chaotic and organic reach nosediving. If content marketing is your game, 2018 would be the year videos take centerstage. It’s going to be exciting and super competitive. These are the trends and focus areas for 2018, something I’m pasting on my wall. Happy New Year :)
1. Videos will continue to dominate
If you’ve been procrastinating about getting on the video bandwagon, it’s time to get started. With low cost smartphones and cheaper data, video is exploding on tiny screens everywhere. You got to experiment with different video formats. Live video is turning out to be huge, we got 65,000 comments on an experiment just last week.
Regional content is fast becoming a big deal in India, an experiment this year hit 20 million views. Even LinkedIn is going gaga on videos, with incredible engagement. It’s time to deep dive and find the format which works for you: short form, long form, web-series, 360 video, live video, interactive video or the enchanting AR/VR.
2. Organic reach will nosedive
With so much competition and chaotic news-feeds, Facebook has made it harder to reach your audience, unless you pay. Your content needs to work harder. If you want to reach millions on low budgets, either have kick-ass share-worthy content or cough up the moolah!
Remember.. views can be bought.. engagement is earned.
Focus on creating content for low attention spans, tiny mobile screens, think conversations not campaigns, obsess about storytelling not high production value and most important: Distribution! We’ll beat platforms at their game, when we make our message so powerful that every messenger becomes an evangelist, spreading our content like wildfire.
3. Brands will be built on content, not advertising
Our generation is trained to ignore Ads. The radars in our heads are so evolved, we can spot BS miles away. Ad blockers are on the rise, TV numbers are down and when was the last time you shared an Ad? Ads will need to evolve, be more authentic and BS free. Engagement is more important than views.
We need to reach their hearts, not bombard their eye-balls.
We’re living in a time where staying relevant is more important than recall. To create kick-ass content, we need multi-skilled storytellers in our teams. Filmmakers who double up as designers, designers who know copywriting and writers who know communication and branding. We need to groom multi-talented rockstars!
Happy Content Marketing in 2018 :)
One more thing..
If you’d like to read more about my experiments in viral marketing or be the first to know when the books comes out.. signup for the Mailing list, connect on LinkedIn or Tweet me up. Oh and here’s the latest viral video :)