Today, when people open the web, they’re automatically bombarded with several thousands of content pieces and formats. In such a crowded landscape, it won’t be unusual for brands to worry about scaling their content marketing efforts.
As a content marketer, I can share the secret sauce for standing out despite the digital world swarming with content from all sides.
But before we get to the main recipe, let me ask you a question. Who are you making your content for? Of course, it’s your target audience. This answer alone solves half of your problem.
So, if you’re crafting content for your audience, doesn’t it make sense to give them what they want to see?
As we step closer to a new year, it’s time to make some tweaks to your current content strategy with these winning content tips 2024 that are not only well received by your audience but also assist you in formulating a profitable content strategy.
2024 Content Strategy Tips and Techniques
Level Up Your EEAT Game
Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust are the four words you’re probably very well acquainted with. If not, then it’s time to make EEAT your favorite acronym, considering its massive significance to Google to make your content rank.
Google’s crawlers hunt for these four factors in your content and then rank it from the highest-quality content to the lowest-quality content. The ranking received by your content ensures where it ranks on the search engine, where the highest quality denotes the top spots, and so on.
One way you can integrate EEAT into your content writing strategy is by conducting keyword research and gap analysis. This enables you to understand how your brand is positioned with these signals.
Once you know about your brand positioning, it’s time to:
- Find out the areas you need to infuse an expertise gap brand lacks first-hand experience and where your brand lacks first-hand experience.
- Plan strategies to develop trustworthiness with your audience and indicate topical authority.
For this purpose, you can forge relationships with content creators or connect with topic experts who can help you fill those gaps.
While EEAT is a guideline introduced by Google, its main idea is to ensure that your content reflects the thinking process of your audience when they’re searching on the web.
Share User Generated Content
User-generated content is the content a brand shares that has been created by its audience using its products or services. Here are the four types of user-generated content you need to include in your content strategy for 2024.
- Crowdsourcing content – Encourage your audience to share their photos, reviews, videos, or stories featuring your products or services. You can even introduce an incentive like a lucky draw or discount to boost participation.
Select the best submissions and share them on your social channels and websites. This gives you authentic content to promote from real customers.
- Hashtag campaigns – Create a branded hashtag and ask your audience to share it on their posts or stories. Not only does this make it easy to compile and curate posts, but such campaigns can also create a buzz surrounding your brand and assist with building brand awareness.
- Social media takeovers – Let your audience, customers, influencers, followers, or employees take over your profiles. Give them complete freedom to post videos, lives, stories, or any form of content.
Takeovers show a raw and unique perspective into user intent and give you unscripted content that your audience will surely love.
- Ratings and reviews – 87% of customers believe that buyer reviews are the most authentic exchange they have with brands. They help foster trust and convince new customers to purchase from the brand.
Customer Centric Content Creation
Recently, the Content Marketing Institute discovered that a major challenge for the majority of marketers is finding the appropriate content topics for their audience.
This has been reiterated by Simon Enser, who said, “Focus on searcher intent. This should underpin all of your activities—research, creation, and distribution. What is the searcher really trying to achieve, and how is your content helping them reach this goal?”
The customer-centric approach stems from Google’s two new content updates that highlight the importance of creating helpful content for your audience and ensuring they have a satisfying experience at your site to perform well in Search.
This has prompted marketers, writers, and SEO experts to produce content that not only answers the queries of their readers but also increases the value of their search experience.
Integrated Content Marketing
Integrated content marketing is one of the upcoming content marketing trends 2024 that has already been adopted by around 70% of large companies.
A prime reason for this is the fact that as brands market their offerings on different platforms, it’s predicted that their audience’s experience of their businesses will become more intertwined.
Simultaneously, a research based on 23 million social media shares displayed a powerful linear correlation between average shares, likes, and comments on social platforms and site rank.
So, although Google doesn’t recognize social signals, there’s no denying that merging social factors and SEO will be a wise move.
Content Marketing Across the Sales Funnel
In a poll conducted for LinkedIn users inquiring about the part of the marketing funnel they aim to optimize for 2024, members had mixed responses for effective content planning 2024.
This reiterates the fact that purpose-driven content has the ability to add value to each stage of your marketing efforts.
Another excellent tip I’d recommend is to repurpose content that performs well at the initial phase of the customer journey for increased personalized value that can assist in influencing decisions at the purchasing stage.
Collaborations and Partnerships for SEO
Collaborations and partnerships have proved to be powerful tools in terms of amplifying reach, tapping into new audiences, and diversifying content offerings, all while demonstrating experience.
Apart from just being a gateway to showcase experience, partnerships can:
- Offer a fresh perspective
- Build trust among target audiences
- Add credibility
All these aspects are essential for the results I’ve mentioned above.
When you align with content creators who share similar thoughts, values, and audiences as your brand, you can develop content that exposes diverse viewpoints while having consistency in the message you wish to deliver.
Through these partnerships, you can discover content platforms and formats that have not been explored before, all the while tapping into new audiences and or re-targeting existing ones.
Moreover, brands can expand their online presence beyond Google as the primary front and ensure their content features a human touch instead of appearing too salesy.
Focus on Small Audience Segments
Google’s AI-Powered Search Productivity Experience follows a content creation process that is guided by search questions which demonstrates a clear representation of search intent.
This transforms how users interact with the search engine to hunt for content. To keep up with this shift in consumer behavior, marketers should:
- Stop relying on a one-size-fits-all audience segment and target smaller audience segments instead.
- Not just rely on market generalizations and industry trends but step up their journey mapping efforts and intent analysis backed up by the consumption metrics of your content.
- Plan the future of your content strategy by using audience data as its foundation rather than solely focusing your content calendar on reacting to immediate events and trends.
Reimagine Organic Search Journeys
Content marketing and SEO are two peas in a pod. So, it wouldn’t make sense to talk about content trends without shedding light on SEO innovations such as Search Generative Experience (SGE).
Similar to the time when Google’s SERP features were introduced, you can now expect lower levels of real estate on search result pages for outdated blue text links. However, Google still advises writers to continue writing for humans.
This is because its bots are advanced enough to spot the most relevant information depending on user queries.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Bottom Line
Uploading your content on Google or social media platforms without a clear mission or strategy is like setting up your hard work for failure. There’s no chance that any marketer would want their labor to go down the gutter.
As a marketer myself my aim is to turn potential leads into loyal customers, increasing the retention rate and ensuring they stay glued to our products. If that’s what you wish to accomplish as well, a well-defined content strategy is the future.
