Digital Marketing Trends to Look Out For

Emerging evolution in internet business now compels digital marketers to use content marketing to do far more than just marketing. This is the real reason for evolving trends in the use of content to do more than create awareness and personalize customer experience. It is generally accepted by digital marketers that content marketing comes in many forms such as blogs, newsletters, videos, podcasts and infographics because they find them as the most creative and effective tools in their marketing efforts. Every smart digital marketer must keep up with trends to remain relevant. Keeping up with the latest trends in digital marketing is one great way to determine which form is most effective for certain campaigns and specific seasons. As a marketer, whichever trends you decide to follow and implement, be sure you have a content marketing strategy in place that will keep you and your business on the right track in the ever-changing cyberspace business world.


 
Here are some of the top content marketing trends currently engaging the attention of digital marketers.

Content Selling
 
There is now a shift in emphasis from general content marketing to content selling. Any content created which does not drive sales is presently perceived as useless. This is why traditional marketing teams and content as all marketers used to know them are gradually going away. There is presently no clear line of demarcation between sales and marketing. It is only the content which drives sales that is now worth creating.

Artificial Intelligence, AI 

With new apps and plugins finding more creative uses in digital marketing, AI is gradually replacing some content marketing agencies and marketers are really excited. With more development and advancement in AI, content marketing agencies which are unable to strategize to be extra creative are inevitably falling far behind in competition.

Targeted Content

Digital marketers very well know that customers are only interested in what matters to them. This is the truism that targeted content strives to exploit. Customers find a business useful to them if what they get from it matters to them.  Businesses that deliberately create targeted content around the things that matter to their customers get better business. This is why deliberately creating targeted content is now trending.

Specialized Content Creation Teams

Hitherto, in many businesses, creating content was assigned to the entire marketing team, many of whom may not be exactly skilled in content creation. That is changing as many businesses now appreciate more the value that good content brings to their businesses. Most marketing teams are now assembled to focus specifically on content creation and the teams made up entirely of people who are skilled at content creation as well as marketing and communications.

Blogging Brevity 

The era of voluminous blogs appears to be over. This is why the popularity of blogs appears to be declining. In actual fact, things are fast going the way of very brief blogs. These days, if businesses want their blogs to be widely read, they will need to be brief in their presentations. More and better integration of video contents with text contents tends to take attention away from text contents. That is why text brevity is now on.

More Live Videos

These videos are not only very brief, they are highly attention arresting. Presently, live videos dominate many contents because digital marketers have found out that live videos are becoming one of the Internet’s most popular forms of content. That is why live videos are poised for higher demands and in more content places in the digital marketing world.

More Personalized Customer Experiences

The more targeted content in use, the more personalized customer experience will become. Marketers are increasingly striving to make content a personalized experience for customers. As content marketing continues to evolve, turning content into something that is experienced and not just consumed will become one of the biggest and rewarding trends to follow. 


 
Writing Skills
 
There is now less emphasis on writing skills alone. What is trending is a combination of writing skills plus video and audio production and graphic design skills. This combination now delivers the most potent content for digital marketers in cyberspace.

More Optimized Content
 
Search engine algorithms are changing very frequently. Aside text and video content optimization, there is now an added need to optimize content for voice search. Researchers in the UK have discovered a remarkable upward trend in online searches for voice content, a brand new trend indeed. What this means is that to stay relevant, businesses will have to do much more to start optimizing more of their content for voice search.

More of Interactive Content 


This is now made popular by social media. Interactive content is simply “content that requires the participants’ active engagement.” More interactive content enables participating businesses to receive real-time and hyper-relevant results which help to enhance their businesses. Somehow, interactive content helps businesses to easily reach and positively engage a wider audience at little or no costs at all. This is the reason, it is now trending.

Effective Website Usability Testing Tips

Every serious digital marketer needs a website which serves as a products display window in cyberspace. It is not just enough to have a website. Such website must be accessible and usable. The reason it must be routinely tested for usability without which it may be ineffective to serve the digital marketing purpose for which it was set up. Here are a few tips to get it done.

Owner Testing

As the website owner, you must on your own test and satisfy yourself that your website can serve the purpose for which you set it up. There is no better alternative to conducting real-life testing for your website. It allows you to experience first-hand what your customers will experience when they come over. Owner testing gives you meaningful insights about your product, how it is displayed and how it is perceived by your website visitors. 


 
User Feedback
 
No other test stands better credibility than user feedback. It gives the website owner credible information about how the website helps customers to perceive and understand the product/service on display. The information is very useful because it is they who go through the website and experience what it offers. Listening to and evaluating their reviews helps provide the information needed to identify the blind spots which require urgent fixing or to be eliminated altogether as needed.

Simulate Real-Time Conditions

If you have experience in website usage, it is possible to simulate conditions which the site may encounter real time. With that, you can identify a number of real-world issues which your website will face on full deployment. Your duty is to incorporate as many of these issues as possible to determine how they impact user experience.

Discard Biases

For a site that is expected to serve many and varied people, it helps to set aside biases and settle for what will be universally acceptable. The reason you must embark on usability testing by proceeding without any kind of preconceived notions in your mind. Let users freely do their own thing on your site without you teleguiding them on how to interact with your website. It is the gap between their real experience and expected experience which provides the information needed in usability testing.

Insider Sessions

This is a way of allowing closely related others to weigh in on the testing. These insiders could be friends, relatives, staff and close acquaintances that were not part of the website development and have never even visited the website. The information from such persons particularly other staff helps to identify most of the issues regarding the workflow and any kind of conflicts and confusions which can hamper free use of the website.