22 Content Marketing Trends for 2024

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, one concept remains constant: the need to market your brand with high-quality content. The new year brings new challenges and opportunities, which is why businesses must stay ahead of content marketing trends. 

Small business owners should focus on strategic content creation to remain competitive and relevant in the new year. Key trends include curating humanized, value-driven, and interactive content and paying attention to the continued relevance of search engine optimization (SEO).

Understanding and leveraging these trends can significantly benefit your business in terms of engagement, brand loyalty and, ultimately, sales. That’s why we’re offering an inside look at the best practices for making your brand stand out.

Why Your Business Needs Content Marketing in 2024 

As consumer demand for content grows, your business needs to fill that demand. It’s not enough to prioritize quantity over quality. Consumers want meaningful content that answers questions, gives advice or offers a unique insight.

Lead Nurturing and Generation

Content marketing plays a pivotal role in capturing and nurturing leads. Valuable content helps you guide your existing and potential audience through their struggles without asking for anything in return. Almost 80% of brands use content to generate and nurture leads. Investing time and resources to build relationships with potential leads helps convert them to customers.

If you provide helpful content long enough, your audience will grow fond of it and want to stay connected with your business. The average customer requires eight touchpoints before converting. That means eight separate times of connecting with your brand. When the time is right (and if your content is compelling enough), they will exchange their money for your products and services.

Community Building Around Your Brand

Everyone is looking for people with similar goals and problems. Content marketing is one way to connect people with their peers.

Community building around your brand organizes your loyal customers in one area. Interacting and exchanging information that benefits one another helps create emotional attachments between customers and your brand, which is known as brand affinity. Your business will be at the center of it all, creating and building connections between community members to increase sales and customer retention. 

You can build community through social media, forums, reward or affiliate programs, and user-generated content (UGC). UGC offers opportunities for unfiltered, authentic content created by your community members. Seeing real people share their opinions on a product or service influences others to join in.

This group of loyal customers is a great place to test new products, share sneak peeks, and gather feedback. Be sure to reward your community members for their loyalty. Your community will thrive if your members feel appreciated and incentivized to stay.

Connecting and Converting Customers

Authenticity is a primary ingredient in content marketing. The more you engage with your audience, the more your personality, value system and approach to customers’ challenges will shine through. 

Now, more than ever, customers want to support brands whose missions align with their values. In fact, 86% of consumers said authenticity matters when choosing brands to support. That’s why it’s crucial to recognize your company’s values and infuse them into your marketing content. These aspects of your business will help you connect with (and convert) customers who share your perspective.

Developing Relationships

Every relationship comes down to the exchange of values and trust. Few things are more valuable to customers than a brand that consistently helps them solve their problems. Customers aren’t focused on your “sales pitch.” They want to know if your values align with their own.

Content marketing helps you develop relationships with customers, keeps them coming back, and turns them into advocates for your brand. Every content asset you create reinforces your knowledge of customers’ goals and pain points. Your proposed solutions will demonstrate how knowledgeable you are, all of which help you establish credibility and trust in your industry.

You can build trust with your audience by telling authentic stories surrounding your brand, responding appropriately to negative feedback, and owning up to mistakes when you make them.

Cultivating Brand Awareness

You can’t sell a product if customers don’t know you exist. Creating useful content puts your brand in front of people’s eyes. Consumers are quick to pass quality content around online. This sharing increases awareness of your brand. For many companies, this sharing gets your foot in the door for a new audience of consumers. Your distribution strategies will help you reach new audiences and expand your brand reach over time.

When you discuss a consumer’s pain point and offer a solution, you’ve given them something of value. And because you’re addressing the real problems people face — not trying to sell your audience on something — they’ll be more open to what you have to say.

Enhancing SEO

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand. Search visibility is a major content marketing play. By creating and optimizing valuable content for customers and search engines, your content will appear in favorable positions when your ideal customers search for keywords related to your business. 

It’s not a guessing game. Using tools like Google Keyword Planner, you can find the words your customers are searching for. Strategically incorporate these keywords into your content to ensure people can find your brand. Producing consistent, high-quality content boosts your SEO.

The Importance of Keeping Up with Content Marketing Trends 

Content marketing trends aren’t just something to discuss as the new year rolls around. They’re worthy of understanding, studying, and applying. Staying up to date with popular marketing methods keeps your content fresh and allows you to engage with new audiences. Here are some reasons to keep up with content marketing trends.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

New businesses, products and services pop up every day. And the reality is your products or services are probably not so utterly different from your competitors. How you run your business and market your products sets you apart. Your competitors are likely promoting content to a similar audience. You can outshine your competitors by creating quality content that benefits your audience. 

Focus Your Content in the Right Direction

Just like trends change and develop, your customers do, too. Understanding your customers’ changing consumption patterns will help you create content specific to their needs and deliver it accordingly. By understanding your target audience, you can align your content with the evolving market needs.

Provide Opportunities for Your Brand

Tracking trends can open doors for marketing opportunities you haven’t yet discovered. You may find a niche genre that works for your brand. Implementing new processes can spark ideas that may move you ahead of the curve or make you a trendsetter. 

Keeping up with content marketing trends also opens you up to changing customer demands and behavior. It can force you to find new ways to meet your audience’s demands. 

Produce Relatable Content

Don’t create content just for the sake of it. If a genre isn’t resonating with your audience, it’s not worth the investment. You shouldn’t make long-form videos your bread and butter if Instagram reels are the most popular content for your target market. Reviewing and considering trends helps you produce content in the format that best serves your audience and gets you the most attention. 

Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2024

Keeping up with content marketing trends is all about meeting consumers’ needs. Now that you understand why you should keep up with the trends and how they can potentially help your business, let’s look at what we expect to see more of in 2024. 

1. Short-Form Video

Video isn’t going away anytime soon. Although slightly different formats, video seems to make this list every year. Moving visual content has always commanded more attention than any other format. But short-form content is currently hitting the right notes, so it’s not surprising that social media platforms like TikTok have risen in popularity to fill this niche.

Reasons short-from videos will trend in 2024 include:

• Shrinking Attention Spans. You don’t have the luxury of a few minutes to catch the viewer’s eye. The average attention span now sits at a lowly eight seconds. 
• Engagement. Videos are more engaging, thanks to their visual cues and incentive for participation. If you do manage to grab a viewer’s attention in the first few seconds, they’re more likely to consume your content for longer.

Short-form videos enable brands to deliver a straight-to-the-point version of larger content assets. It has the highest ROI of any video marketing strategy by 30%. And thanks to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, creating and consuming this type of content is easier than ever before. 

Tips to make your videos more evocative in 2024 include:

• Focus on Visuals. The visual nature of video is its appeal. Center on it right from the beginning. Make the first few seconds count by visually captivating your audience.
• Optimize. Like everything else you do in marketing, you need people to see your video. Optimize it for relevant distribution channels.
• Add Music. Use background music to create liveliness, emotion or energy.
• Make It Accessible. Many people watch videos with the sound off or are audio-impaired. Add subtitles to make your video accessible to everyone.

2. Strategic SEO

SEO is an evergreen necessity in web content strategies. Search algorithms will continue to evolve in 2024, and your search visibility will depend on a strategic plan to get your content as high on the search engine results page (SERP) as possible.

Do you remember when having a sheer volume of content was enough to rank high on Google? It’s no longer quantity over quality. Google currently emphasizes Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT).

Your best bet in 2024 is to find ways to satisfy user intent and search requirements on an ongoing basis, which comes down to on-page, off-page and technical SEO.

Want to learn more about SEO? Read our posts on SEO Content Marketing that Works and Simple SEO Solutions to Propel Your Site Traffic.

3. Voice Search Tactics for SEO

Voice search has been around for more than a decade, but customers are beginning to embrace its ease of use in new ways. By allowing customers to speak into their smartphones to find information online, searchers can bypass the struggle of typing or spelling words correctly.

About half of people now use voice search daily for question-and-answer type searches, like locating the nearest car dealerships or restaurants or searching for products. That’s also why Alexa or Siri now come pre-installed on most smartphones.

If your content isn’t optimized for voice in 2024, your website won’t appear when people voice-search relevant keywords. You can research voice keywords to get you started. 

To integrate voice search into your 2024 content strategy:

• Use Local SEO Tactics. Optimize for local SEO. Voice search is most accurate with local searches.
• Think About Questions. Think about how people ask questions. Focus on question type and long-tail keywords. They are easier to find with voice search. Voice search typically uses conversational keywords that mimic normal voice patterns and syntax. For example, “Where can I buy a yoga mat?”
• Use Snippets. Leverage Google-featured snippets so voice searchers can find your website through short but exhaustive answers.
• Focus on Speed. Optimize your website for speed to improve your website’s user experience.
• Optimize for Mobile. Most voice searches come from mobile devices.

4. Humanizing the Content Experience

Customers have massive content choices, so the emphasis on user experience will be more significant this year.

Consumers process their interactions with your brand in more micro-interactions than you think. Personalizing their content experience across all channels will help you harmonize their experience throughout their interactions with your brand.

Analyze your customers’ thought patterns and behaviors. How do they receive, feel and respond to your content? Use this information to shape their content experience and align your brand values with your content. 

Customer journey maps help to improve content experiences throughout the buyer’s journey, but creating all these interactions can get overwhelming. The Content Journey team can help map your customer journey and give you everything you need to keep them hooked to your brand all year round.

5. Visual Content

A picture is still worth a thousand words, and people continue to focus on visual content. While brand consistency matters across your marketing strategy, visual variety is compelling. Visuals help your audience connect with your business and recognize your brand image. They’re also more likely to remember your brand with an image attached.

Videos, infographics, charts, photos, etc., can communicate multiple ideas to make complex ideas understandable. That’s why consumers are 37% more likely to engage with visuals than other content types. Add visual content to your 2024 content strategy to offer consumers a more immersive experience. 

6. Storytelling

Storytelling communicates a narrative. Whether that narrative is to share an idea or encourage buying a product, it’s an effective way to connect with another person. The facts are clear. The concept that stories sell is as correct in 2024 as it was in 2004. When you consider how marketers bore people with facts, figures, and statistics, you’ll understand why the businesses that emotionalize the data with stories build better connections and increase sales.

One way to leverage stories in 2024 is user-generated content (UGC). This tactic allows you to amplify customers’ success stories with your brand. Curating authentic, relatable content makes you more palatable to an audience.

By documenting their struggles before using your products or services and your role in their resolution, you’re showing — not telling — your potential customers how they stand to benefit from your brand.

In 2024, use storytelling to sell your products. If that will be a problem, consider hiring a content marketing agency like Content Journey to help you leverage the power of words, story angles, and distribution systems to shape your narrative and brand perception.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence took a leap with the launch of ChatGPT toward the end of 2022. Now armed with Natural Language Proficiency, AI can help with audio, video, and written content creation and distribution.

Even though it lacks the much-needed human touch, AI can give you the basics if you know how to guide it. It can analyze search intent to help target your customers with relevant content.

To get the most out of AI in 2024, be sure to:

• Know the Purpose. Understand the problems you want to solve with it and whether it’s up to the challenge.
• Use as a Supplement. Determine how your team will use it as a supplement to maximize its potential.
• Gather Data. Organize your data in one place for AI to work with.
• Focus on Tools. Don’t look to AI to replace current processes or people but to enhance your toolkit. 

8. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) has become increasingly popular. Its use of computer-generated images to create an imaginary view of the world around users allows brands to showcase their products and bridge the gap between customers’ in-store and virtual shopping experiences.

Social networks like Snapchat and Pinterest thrive on augmented reality. Websites are adding it now too. Users can do anything from try a color on their living room before they paint to seeing how a hairstyle would work for them. 

AR is helpful for:

• Attracting awareness-stage buyers
• Establishing positive opinions about a brand
• Encouraging potential buyers to move forward with a purchase

To maximize AR in 2024, you must:

• Focus on Goals. Establish how it ties back to your marketing goals. Don’t use a new tool just to use it. 
• Know Your Audience. Understand if your audience’s content consumption behavior will benefit from AR solutions.
• Use Storytelling. Improve your ability to use explainer content with storytelling and appealing visuals to persuade consumers to try your products.
• Sell Directly. Use simple and direct calls to action to close the deal.

9. Social Media as a Customer Service Tool

Customers love to engage with their favorite brands on social media. And 81% of millennials, the highest spending age group, are active social media users. What does this mean for your business?

Don’t negate the buying power of up-and-coming Gen Z. With easy access to shopping through social media like TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping, purchasing products is just a click away for many teens and young adults.

When marketing to Gen Z, avoid going straight for the sell. An unfiltered, authentic approach resonates more with young audiences than a highly polished ad. Establish your brand as something worth paying attention to first with engaging and informative content. 

Optimizing your social media pages with content that engages your audience will help existing and prospective customers find you when they need you most. One way to maximize this approach is to moderate your social media comment section. Promptly attend to their concerns to improve their brand experience.

Make the most of social for customer service in 2024:

• Choose Strategically. Focus on the right channels. You don’t need to be on every social media outlet, but you must show up where your customers are.
• Respond Readily. You need to actively engage on the channels you choose for your business. Respond to customers on time. 
• Move Offline. Be responsive, but don’t hash out customer issues in public. Know when to take a customer’s issue offline for expedited resolution. 

10. Podcasts

The demand for podcast content blew up in 2020 and continues to increase. About 62% of Americans listen to one of the two million active podcasts.

Podcasts are easy to consume because your audience can listen while cooking, exercising, or driving. They are also relatively easy to create. So, it’s not surprising that consumers and marketers have found them valuable.

The podcast ad space is profitable. You can either purchase a slot for a pre-recorded ad or collaborate with the hosts on brand deals. With host-read ads, you can jump the hurdle of creating a personal connection with your audience as it’s already coming from a familiar voice. The host can add clever jokes or personal anecdotes to attach a positive sentiment to your brand.

To benefit from podcasting in 2024:

• Know Your Target. Study your consumers’ needs to know what to address in podcast episodes.
• Focus on Presentation. Determine how you’ll present your episodes to appeal to your audience.
• Embrace Promotion. Take advantage of your customers’ networks to promote your podcast.

11. Blog Repurposing

Repurposed content takes less time and helps you engage people who might otherwise be too busy to read the full post.

Your old content assets do not have to gather dust in 2024. By breaking a piece of content into bite-sized chunks, you can get more content to share on social media or other marketing channels to reach new audiences.

Tips for repurposing blog posts include:

• Repurpose as a Script. You can turn your blog post into a script for video content or podcasting. Record it as a voiceover or a talking head to the camera. 
• Convert to Social Media. Incorporate key phrases or bullet points into a graphic to share on social media.
• Rewrite the Post. If a blog post isn’t performing as you expected, rewrite it with a shifted focus, new keywords, or relevant statistics for another go at promotion. 

If a post isn’t serving you, you don’t have to necessarily sentence it to the trash bin. You can repurpose existing content to help you go further in the digital landscape. 

12. Data Privacy

We talk about customer data a lot in marketing. Data helps brands understand and personalize their customer experiences. On the other hand, it also leaves customers more exposed to fraud. Every data breach makes customers more apprehensive of the bits and pieces of the information businesses collect.

That’s why people are getting more interested in how their data is processed and used.

So, what does this mean for your business? Strive to comply with ethical data collection methods like cookie-free advertising and be transparent about it. It will inspire confidence in your customers, who will want to keep doing business with you.

That also means more work for content marketers, who must add data portability and localization to their responsibilities.

13. Interactive Content

You won’t get away with boring one-way communication in 2024. Communication, by itself, is a two-way street. But content marketers have traditionally spoken at — instead of speaking with — their audiences without giving them room to respond for far too long.

Static posts and similar non-interactive content only communicate a brand’s ideas to consumers without giving them room to respond. Expect a greater emphasis on content that involves your audience in the conversation in 2024.

This involvement could be as little as clicking a button or asking their opinion on an issue using polls, quizzes, games, and live events to enhance customer participation.

14. Content, Search, and SEO Fusion

Working in tandem with these ideas takes your content marketing to the next level. SEO increases your traffic to the content you’ve created, but it depends on strong content to be successful. SEO helps you research and analyze your content’s best keywords and strategies. The content creation executes these strategies effectively with the target audience and the purpose of the piece in mind. 

When you execute the fusion of content with search and SEO, concentrate on human-centric content creation. Focus on curating content that connects with your audience and has a clear style, tone and messaging that’s consistent with your brand.

15. Purpose and Differentiation in Content 

When dozens, if not hundreds, of other companies offer similar products or services, you must set yourself apart. Look at the content your competitors are creating. It’s time to step up to the plate if they’re doing something effective. If you see a gap that you can fill, take the initiative. Push what makes your brand unique. 

To differentiate your brand, try:

• Building a community with your customers
• Offering quality customer service
• Sending personalized email marketing 
• Creating unique, interactive video content

Explore areas of the market your competitors are missing. Curate purposeful, differentiated content to stand out.

16. Emphasize Quality Over Quantity

There’s a consistent theme in digital marketing trends of 2024, and it’s all about creating quality content. In an oversaturated world of ads and promotions, your business should focus on what makes content engaging and impactful.

Don’t just write for a general audience. Be specific in who you’re writing for and why. What sort of tone does your audience respond to? How can you create a conversation with your readers rather than just speaking at them?

The shift toward valuing content quality over quantity can’t be ignored. And it’s better for your business. Don’t spend your budget pumping out content that won’t get read. Invest in informative, well-written content that will impact the reader. 

17. AI Experiments vs. Experience Balance

With new AI tools popping up every day, it might be challenging to determine what’s useful. But it’s worth your time to experiment with different tools. You may find innovations that save you time, money and energy in the long run. 

Be aware of getting sucked into new gadgets and failing to recognize each tool’s practical application. Evaluate your brand and marketing goals to discern which tools are useful for your business.  

18. Focus and Process in Content Marketing

Content often goes through multiple rounds of edits and approvals before making it to publishing. In a fast-paced world, you might not have time to sit through a month of approvals before your content becomes irrelevant. By adapting your content production and approval processes for modern marketing, you can get your content in front of readers even faster. 

Tips for expediting your approval process include:

• Use spell check or grammar tools to find basic errors
• Optimize your content for SEO best practices
• Ensure the content matches your business branding

19. Intelligent Automation in Content Marketing

Through intelligent automation, tedious jobs typically performed by humans can be reassigned.  When you hire IA onto your staff, it can perform various automated tasks, posting to social media, sending email marketing, performing fixes and reporting. 

IA removes the work of completing automated tasks, allowing you more time to focus on creating quality content. 

20. Human and Machine Collaboration

While the rise of AI can feel scary and intimidating, it’s important to remember that it is simply a tool to help you. When executed correctly, there is great collaborative potential between humans and AI in content creation. 

AI is not a replacement for original content creation, but a helping hand for performing tasks in tandem. It can offer suggestions, perform data analysis and language translation, and provide insight into SEO.

21. Shoppable Content in Social Commerce

The social media shopping experience is quickly gaining popularity. It’s easier than ever to buy a product feature in an influencer’s video when you can order it yourself in-app. 

Entering the ecommerce world is more accessible now, thanks to social media. It’s direct access to consumers that is quickly gaining traction. Even if you already have an e-commerce website, social media shopping introduces you to a new audience. It’s also helpful for getting traction on your social media pages. 

Incorporate shoppable content in your social media platforms and join the thousands of brands already utilizing this valuable tool.

22. User-Generated Content (UGC) Remains Key

To increase your brand awareness, establish positive sentiments around your brand, and utilize word-of-mouth marketing, don’t skip on UGC. There’s a reason it remains a top marketing strategy for brands. Consumers trust other consumer’s opinions. 

UGC humanizes your brand and offers an aspect of approachability. People know their resources are precious, and they’re less likely to risk spending on something they might not like. Just as customers look to restaurant or hotel reviews, they’ll seek product reviews or testimonials to gauge the purchasing risk.

What’s Not Changing in 2024

While many things are changing in content marketing, many other tenets of the discipline will stay the same in 2024 and likely beyond.

Backlinks Are Still Key

Google still rates helpful content above anything else, and backlinks are one way it understands the value of your content.

Since any site that links to yours gives you a vote of confidence, it tells search engines what they need to know about your expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Expect backlinks to remain valuable in 2024.

How do you earn strong backlinks? Write excellent content that informs people and meets their needs. The backlinks will come automatically.

Mobile Optimization Matters

More than half of global traffic comes from mobile users. What does that tell you? Failure to optimize your website for mobile will cost you half of your potential customers in 2024.

Thankfully, mobile optimization solutions exist to help you optimize your website for mobile access.

How Content Journey Can Help

A new year means identifying what is changing and staying constant. As content marketing develops and changes, success can be a moving target. At Content Journey, it’s our business to stay current on content marketing trends to help you grow your business. 

We’re experts in helping businesses leverage these trends for effective content marketing strategies. Book a call with us today to begin your journey to content marketing success in 2024.