Content marketing was originally meant for building relationships with already existing customers, however, all of that changed in recent years. You’ve probably heard this phrase before:

Content is KING.

Bill Gates said that in 1996 (he might’ve been onto something). Marketers like to fiddle with things to see what works and what doesn’t, and when they tried content — everything changed. That’s how content became KING in the digital marketing world.

All of a sudden, content became the standard choice for brand growth, lead generation, and building relationships. But it’s hard to keep up with all of it.

Content Marketing is a rapid area of marketing and it’s always changing, transforming and updating to make sure only the best kind of content survives. That’s why it’s crucial for marketers and businesses to always stay up to date on the latest trends with content marketing. If you want to stay competitive, you have to follow the trends.
With that in mind, here are top 5 content marketing trends of 2019:

Video Content

Content in a video format has been on a rise for a while now, and it shouldn’t surprise you too much to find it on this list. As the digital world becomes increasingly cluttered, people are looking for the easiest ways to consume content. Truth is… reading (ironically) is getting old. People would much rather view and listen to content while doing something else, like making a coffee for example.

Statistics show that users spend 88% more time on a website with video. Also, after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online. Video content is a powerful marketing tool.

Photo: Fox (Pexels)

If you’re looking to stay ahead of the pack… you should probably consider creating video content. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that video content takes a huge amount of time or money because it doesn’t. In fact, it can be really simple and cheap to create video content.

Depending on your needs, all you have to do is stand in front of the camera and speak or use one of the amazing online video maker tools such as this one from Renderforest. You can create some pretty great content with little effort and no money, so why not use all that to get ahead with the content marketing.

Chatbots

There was a lot of chat about chatbots in recent years with many businesses deciding to implement one on their website. Chatbots work and the reason for that is simple — people want information, and they want it fast.

Using chatbots properly allows you to efficiently direct your site visitors to the most relevant content. Also, it saves a lot of time and money in the process since you don’t have to hire 24/7 customer support. Obviously, chatbots have their flaws and nothing can replace human interaction but there are still many places where the positives of chatbots far outweigh the negatives.

Photo: FlowXO

In the end, customers appreciate chatbots over nothing. Stats show that 24/7 access is preferable for 64% of customers. Content marketers under-appreciate chatbots but the tools are getting better each year and in 2019 it’d be a shame not to have one.

Some of the most popular chatbots are:

• MobileMonkey for Facebook Messenger

• Botsify

• Tars

• FlowXO

• Wit.ai

Long-form Content

Long-form content saw a huge expansion in the past few years now and it’s still going to be relevant in 2019. Some industries are packed with high-quality long-form content and there’s little room for improvement, however, most industries can still benefit from long-form content.

There are multiple reasons why long-form content works so well — search engines love it, and users love it too. Long-form content typically covers a specific topic in its entirety, giving way more information on that topic than anything else out there. It’s also powerful for building great case-studies which work really well for marketing because of their personal aspect (and proven results as well).

If you want to excel with content marketing in 2019 — focus on long-form content. Create value-packed blog posts, case studies and other things which fully cover a single topic.

Social Media

The truth is… social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s packed with content and it’s just going to get bigger in 2019.

What you really have to understand in regards to content marketing is this — most businesses are doing social media wrong. The content that they put out is sub-par and boring and their results reflect that. These people would like you to believe that social media is dying and there’s no space to excel, but that’s just plain wrong.

What really works for social media is what works for everything else, and that is high-quality value-packed content. No, people most likely don’t want to see another generic image or tweet about this or that. They do want to see or read about that brand new thing that you created. The key to conquering social media is unique, authentic content that captivates attention and speaks to the audience.

If social media takes up too much of your time, use some of these tools to help you out:

• Buffer

• Salesforce

• Hootsuite

Voice Search

Photo: Andres Urena

Finally, we’ve got something completely fresh to the list — Voice Search. The stats show that more and more customers are using voice search to find relevant information or products to buy. Voice search is a $B industry and there’s a good reason for that as it saves a lot of time for people.

There are two ways to use this to your advantage in regards to content marketing. First, you should optimize all of your content for voice search in preparation for the rising trend. If you properly optimize for this, a lot of traffic will come your way. And secondly, you should consider what this trend really means for marketing.

If people are starting to save time by using voice search, then (as we talked earlier) we can conclude that they also want to save time on consuming content. Try creating voice content if possible, be it podcasts, webinars or live stream shows, anything that can be consumed while doing some other activity.

Ideally, you want your customers to consume your content as they go about their daily morning run.

These are the top 5 content marketing trends for 2019 and you should consider them very carefully. Use them to your advantage and get ahead of your competition, starting now.

Special thanks to Rawpixel for the cover photo!

Read next: 10 Traits of Successful Video Marketing Campaigns