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Content has been king when it comes to marketing since most of us can remember, and that certainly doesn’t look set to change any time soon. But over the last few years, content and the way that it is consumed online has changed dramatically. Content creation is no longer simply about writing content that has the right keywords for Google to pick up when users conduct relevant searches. Here are some of the biggest ways that online content has changed.
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User Friendliness:
Back in the day, users weren’t the main concern for businesses producing content – it was all about making sure that all the right keywords were hit to improve Google search ranking results and secure that top spot. This caused an influx of poor-quality, practically useless content from the point of the user who often did not learn anything new or get any value from it. Google caught onto this and over the years has increasingly made user-friendliness more important when it comes to creating content. Keywords are still useful, but hold very little value in content that provides no value to the user or is poorly constructed. Whatever happens with content marketing in the future, the users are always going to be the main priority.
Long-Form Content:
In the past, there would be a lot of short articles of a few hundred words published all over the web for the purpose of keywords. But today, that’s simply not good enough. With providing value to the user more and more important, long-form content is the most popular type of written content online today, with in-depth guides and articles taking priority over short snippets of information the majority of the time.
Shorter Content:
While longer is better for written content, there has been an increase in various other content mediums like infographics, social media graphics and videos. With lives getting busier and many people consuming content on-the-go, this type of snappy, short content that’s easy to consume in minutes compared to lengthy blog posts and articles is becoming even more crucial than ever before. A wise move for those writing long-form articles is to create an accompanying video or infographic that summarizes the points for readers who are short on time.
User-Generated Content:
With the rise of social media in the past few years, user-generated content has become more and more widespread. While we used to see brands creating content exclusively for users, the fact that more and more users are creating their own content like Instagram stories and posts is not going unnoticed by businesses. An example of this would be clothing businesses which often search posts that they are tagged in on Instagram of customers wearing their brand’s pieces to use on their online profile. Using user-generated content is a great idea for many reasons including increased engagement and a better relationship with customers.
Content has come a long way since the days of filling an article with as many relevant keywords as you could find. In the future, which content types would you like to see more of?
