Top Content Marketing Trends for 2024

No matter where you are on the planet—we bet content surrounds you almost every second. You get it from social media feeds, newsletters, e-books, Youtube videos, websites, and even right now reading this article.

Content is the indicator of our progress as a civilization: While 45,000 years ago cave paintings were the peak of creativity and communication, now an email won’t be read unless it’s original and optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

Our needs and tools evolve so fast that it’s only natural to keep a hand on the pulse of the latest trends and innovations. That’s why we’ve gathered a list of six content marketing trends you should consider adopting in your 2024 marketing strategy.

1. Interactive content 

Interactive content has topped the charts for the last couple of years, and it’s not going anywhere. 62% of marketers already use it, and 88% plan to remake some static content into interactive soon.

When done right, it catches the eye, drives higher customer engagement, brings in repeat visitors and multiple viewing exposures.

Polls and quizzes are great to quickly engage your audience on social media and gather sales intel on what your target audience is really like. They can also be integrated into your blogs and landing pages, making them more engaging and bringing in more leads. 

Interactive videos have captured marketers’ attention since the arrival of Bandersnatch, so CTAs in videos are now a must. According to MarketingCharts, this form of content is prevalent because it allows customers to feel like decision-makers (which they are). As a result, incorporating CTAs into interactive videos not only boosts customer engagement but also provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to showcase their products or services through a customer engagement platform.

2. Hybrid Events 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, live events got canceled, and the industry took a long pause. It regrouped and opened its online doors, and for some time, that was it. However, customers longing for something besides online communication created a new content marketing trend—a hybrid between live and online events.

According to Bizzabo, most marketers will invest in virtual events, although they do not believe offline events can be entirely replaced. So, to get good results here, try to find a middle ground that works best for you and your audience.

If you plan to pursue events this year for the first time, you may start with online since they are a bit easier to execute (webinars, online conferences, or live streams). 

3. Optimization

Optimizing your processes to get better results will always be popular among successful business people. In content, there’s always something you can improve. 

First, start with visuals. Images are perceived faster by the human brain than text, so relevant design can grab the attention and highlight a point being made in the blog or any other written content. Using infographics (especially interactive ones) is a great way to represent valuable data from surveys and research.

If you don’t have visuals in the required format or quality, you can conduct an image search to explore similar picture results. This utility can be helpful in exploring ideas and finding the best visuals to support your textual content.

Pro Tip: Create a style guide for your designers so all of the visual content you see is united by one style. 

• Next comes mobile optimization. More than half of all traffic is mobile, meaning that if your landing pages, emails, and blogs are not optimized to be seen on mobile devices, you’d be losing potential customers.
  
  Note: Remember that mobile devices are not limited to smartphones, so your optimization must include tablets of various sizes as well.
• Last but not least is optimizing your content for the voice search. As of 2021, almost 123 million people in the U.S. were using voice assistants, and that’s a 10% growth since 2017. The numbers will continue to rise, and it may be in your best interest to get your content optimized for voice search. 

4. Audio Content 

While we are on the topic of voices, audio content promises to be as popular as ever in 2024. Audio allows consumers to connect on a personal level with a company. The sound of the real voice (or even text to speech) achieves memorability and trust and beats out ad-based video content.

Although a podcast is no longer the new kid on the block, it is the most popular one. According to Edison Research, podcasts now reach over 100 million Americans every month. A podcast can be a decent platform to share your thought leadership and introduce your brand to a wider audience. 

5. SEO Strategies

Visibility of your content in search engines is one of the most critical factors of your content success. If you are on page seventeen of Google search, all the blog posts or case studies you've created will never be read, and that’s why you need search engine optimization (SEO) strategies in your marketing outreach.

About 64% of marketers actively invest time in it, and no wonder because it’s even better in generating sales than pay-per-clicks (PPCs). Investing in SEO enters your content in a ranking game, and there are things like using specific keywords and creating a particular volume of words that can raise you to the top.

You can hire an SEO specialist or try a few SEO tools like BuzzSumo or Yoast.

6. Customer-centric Approach 

The key to following any content marketing trend is to figure out if it improves your customers’ experience. With every trend and business strategy, you have to ask yourself: “Who are my customers? What are their needs and challenges? What can I do for them?”

Answers to these questions will allow you to customize your content and create a personalized experience for all your clients.

For instance, message personalization is the number one tactic used by email marketers to improve performance. In marketing (and life), a human touch can go a long way. 

Bonus Tips

• Explore various content forms and see which ones resonate with your audience the most. Blogs (86%), case studies (42%), and customer success stories (36%) are the most popular content formats.
• Use AI tools for grammar and spell checks of your content.
• Repurpose and update your old content. For instance, your blog post can become a video, and a podcast can inspire a blog post. 

Start Your Own Content Marketing Trends 

Trends are often associated with fashion, and as we know, fashion comes and goes. Content marketing trends are rather like directional signs: They know where the road goes and what turn you should take.

Years of marketing experience across industries led to these new ways of doing business; however, perhaps this is the year you can create something unique and new. And next year, we’ll include your discovery in the trends for 2024. Who knows?