Content marketing is one of the digital marketing trends in 2022. And if you want to succeed, it should be a core part of your digital marketing strategy. This article will discuss content marketing in 2022, what has changed, and what you can do differently.
When Bill Gates wrote an essay titled ‘Content is King’ in January 1996, he wasn’t only talking about blog posts and articles. But also, White papers, eBooks, podcasts, email newsletter, videos, infographics, etc.
Content marketing is taking a new dimension in 2022. And video content is one of the areas brands want to focus on.
You may want to ask if video content is really the future of content marketing. Well, it’s a fact.
More brands now use video as part of their marketing campaign. Between 2017 till date, there have been over 38% increase in video content.
Surprisingly, 72% of content consumers say they now prefer videos over text-based content.
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Video Content in 2022
Now that you know that creating more video content is one of the content marketing trends of 2022, what will you do differently?
This section will talk about some of the tips and tricks that will help you create viral videos across different platforms.
So, here are some of the tips that will help you create amazing videos in 2022;
Pay Attention to Your Video Introductions
Whenever you create a video, try to pay attention to your video intros.
Whether you are making videos for YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, etc., introduction plays a vital role in your video performance.
A good introduction will make people spend more time watching your videos and help you engage your audience better.
According to YouTube’s internal data, a strong first 15 seconds of your video can keep viewers watching.
That is why experts strongly advise against starting your videos with fancy graphics, animated logos, or trying to explain to your audience why you decided to make a video.
Let me tell you this; your audience won’t give a damn about you. All they need is information, and if the first 15 seconds of your video are not promising, they leave immediately.
So, always jump right into the main topic and start dishing out information.
Focus On YouTube
If you choose video production as your content marketing strategy, ensure you focus on YouTube.
I know Facebook videos and Instagram reels are becoming popular. But videos posted on YouTube tends to perform better.
For a start, YouTube is the most popular website in the world besides Google. And the best part of using YouTube is that your videos will still get views several years after uploading them.
But you can’t say the same for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and several other social media platforms.
Hey! Don’t get me wrong. You can still post your videos on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But your primary focus should be on Google.
It’s easy to grow your audience on YouTube compared to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
Optimized for Suggested Videos
If you finally decide to focus on YouTube, you need to optimize every video you post.
Optimizing your videos makes it easier for you to reach more YouTube audiences.
It doesn’t matter whether your channel is new or not; with the right optimization strategy, YouTube will suggest your videos.
According to experts, optimizing for suggested videos is the best way to expose your videos to more audiences.
If you are familiar with how YouTube works, you will understand that most views on the platform come from suggested videos.
Funnily, it’s easy to optimize your videos for suggested videos. All you have to do is optimize the video tags and description around a popular topic in your niche.
Once you do this, your video will be shown next to other videos within your niche that are already getting many views.
Have a Script
You already know that video is one of the aspects of content marketing in 2022. But how do you create a good video?
It starts with writing a great script. Most people’s greatest mistake is getting in front of the camera without a script.
It’s natural; you may feel intimidated the first time you get in front of the camera. You may even forget how to speak, which will affect your video’s quality.
But if you record with a script, every section of your video will be more focused.
How to Write a Great Video Script?
Here are a few tips to help you write excellent scripts that make your videos unforgettable. So, here are a few tips to help you write a great script;
#1. Don’t write half script. Ensure you finish every script you create.
#2. Get scripts of some popular videos, read them, and study their writing style.
#3. Whenever you are writing scripts, don’t show, tell.
#4. Try to write about your strengths. If you are naturally funny, let it reflects in the script.
#5. As a beginner, only write about stories that you know.
#6. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but ensure that you learn from your mistakes.
Email Marketing is Back
Email marketing is another core area content marketing in 2022 will focus on. Even though it’s one of the oldest forms of digital communication and it’s effective for promoting your content to your audience.
You may think that using email marketing to promote your content is not a good idea. But it works like magic.
Don’t send a lengthy email. Ensure that your emails are short and straight to the point. Furthermore, try to use irresistible titles.
If you understand how to use email marketing to promote your content, you will get excellent results.
For a start, not every content you use email to promote. Before you promote any content with email, ensure that it’s exclusive.
If you keep sending content that is not exclusive and unique to your audience, it will jump off your email list.
It’s crucial to ensure that every newsletter you send to your email subscribers is exclusive.
If you really want to retain your subscribers, don’t just send them links to your latest blog posts and podcast episodes.
Try to make about 10% of your email newsletter content exclusive. That is, your audience can’t access it from any other platform except through email.
Your audience tends to engage better with your content if they are exclusive.
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How to Scale Your Content Marketing in 2022?
Content creation will be the heart of marketing in 2022. It doesn’t matter whether you want to optimize your website or build a promotional strategy for your PPC ad campaigns; you need content to make it happen.
While video content will dominate the internet in 2022, we will still see more blogs, articles, PR campaigns, social media captions, website content, guest posts, emails, etc.
Unfortunately, any brand that fails to jump into the content marketing bandwagon in 2022 may fall below its competitors.
So, here are some of the strategies to help you scale your content marketing in 2022.
#1. Have a Content Marketing Plan
The first step to scale your content marketing in 2022 is to scale your content marketing plan.
Developing a content marketing plan is as important as creating the content itself. It helps you set your content marketing goals and the strategies to achieve them.
When you have a well-developed plan in place, your content marketing activities will be organized, and your writers will be more creative and tend to meet every deadline.
Depending on your niche and your schedule, you can develop a monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually.
However, you need to consider the following when creating your content calendar;
- Ensure that every content you produce aligns with your company’s goals.
- If possible, the content calendar should have enough rest spaces in between to accommodate urgent deadlines.
- Lastly, consider events, holidays, and season changes whenever you create your content marketing plan. With this, you can prepare your content in advance, thus, avoiding setbacks due to writer’s blocks.
#2. Have a Content Marketing Team
Having a content marketing plan is not enough. You need a team of amazing content creators to achieve these goals.
You can either hire in-house content creators to produce content for your brand or outsource to a reputable digital marketing agency.
If you decide to outsource your content writing task, the Tycoon content marketing team can help you handle it. We deliver leading content marketing services that focus on growing your business.
In reality, your entire content plan is as good as useless if you don’t have a team to match it up.
For instance, if you have only two writers in your team, they may not be able to match up with the content requirements of your calendar.
But if you outsource your entire content creation task, you can easily scale your content marketing in 2022.
You won’t bother yourself with social media captions, technical blogs, and other aspects of content marketing.
#3. Develop a Production Process
If you decide to handle your content writing in-house, you need to develop a content production process.
The process will help you to manage the flow of content creation, distribution, and measurement.
Again, be reminded that your production process is just a guardrail. Try not to micromanage your content curator team; it could affect their creativity and lead to writer’s block.
Allow your content team to handle whatever content marketing strategy you have created without distraction.
To ensure that your content production process runs smoothly, consider the following;
Who
Your content production process should identify everybody involved in your content team.
It includes your writers, publishers, editors, and other key members of your company. Ensure that everybody is aware of their specific roles regarding content writing.
What
You should also consider the type of content you want to create. Depending on your niche and content marketing needs, you can create blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, etc.
Generally, the type of content you create depends on your buyer persona and the stage in the customer journey you want your content to address.
When
Your content production process should have a deadline for every project. You should establish the frequency of content creation and give enough space for internal editing and review.
#4. Develop Writer Specialization
If you want your team to deliver efficiently written and technically sound content consistently, you need to develop subject matter expertise.
Ensure that every project you delegate to your writers develops their knowledge around specific topics, products, or services.
Over time, you will have subject matter experts in your niche. The more people write around a specific topic, the better they become.
But if you have a small team, try to invest in training and educational resources or outsource your entire content writing project.
#5. Hold Regular Editorial Meetings
For maximum efficiency, it’s important to hold regular editorial meetings with your team. Once in a while, bring all the content creators in your company together to;
- Boost creativity through regular brainstorming sessions.
- Discover unique brand stories that are yet to be fully exploited.
- Analyze your existing content to identify its strengths, weaknesses, and performance.
- Discuss trends in your niche and how you can take advantage of real-time newsjacking opportunities.
- Establish a forum where your content writing team members can strategize and prioritize content production.
Ensure that you properly scrutinize every idea discussed in your editorial meetings, evaluate its value, explore its alternatives, brainstorm on topics, prioritize them in order of importance, and try to fit them into your larger content marketing strategy.
#6. Reduce, Reuse, and Repurpose
One of the best ways to scale your content marketing in 2022 is to repurpose. And if you aren’t currently repurposing your content, you are completely wrong.
Funnily, you can combine, reuse, or rethink content to generate new content with less effort.
For instance, you can split larger content assets into blog posts. You can also write a blog post based on a particular section of an infographic you have produced.
Lastly, you can map out a blog post series that you can use as chapters in your next eBook.
When you repurpose your content, you tend to reach more leads in more places and extract more value from your content marketing investments.
If you create an exceptional eBook, for example, you can use it to create attention-grabbing infographics, including narration to create videos.
Repurposing content helps you get more mileage from each topic and re-create valuable content assets for different audiences. And this will make every content you create more targeted and relevant.
#7. Be Selective with Your Content Production
Don’t just mass product content; ensure that every content you publish delivers amazing value to your buyer persona.
Every content you publish should give a personalized experience to your audience in every stage of their buying journey.
You can repurpose existing content to meet your audience-specific needs across the sales cycle.
You can also take advantage of trendy topics that people are talking about in your niche. for every content you create, evaluate its performance and engagement.
Once you notice that a particular content seems promising, put in extra efforts to promote it. And those that aren’t performing right now, you can repurpose them to either video or infographics.
It’s important to understand your audience and know what works best for you.
#8. Always Analyze Your Content Performance
As a content creator, it’s crucial always to evaluate your content performance. Compare the actual metrics of your content with the expected.
And if the content is performing below expectation, analyze it with your team to improve its weakness and build upon its strengths.
Here are some tips to help you analyze your content performance;
- Carry out a daily analysis of your content performance. Take note of spikes and investigate unusual decreases in traffic.
- Establish monthly, quarterly, and annual KPIs to measure content performance. You can allow thoughts leaders in your niche to contribute to your content production when necessary.
- Try to include spot-checks into your analytics to evaluate the performance of new content initiatives easily.
#9 Prepare for the Next Generation of Content Marketing
To scale your content marketing in 2022, you must be prepared for the next content production and marketing generation.
Brands must be ready to embrace and leverage content marketing to grow their business in 2022.
Content creation is changing rapidly, and brands must be ready to move with the change.
So, your content marketing strategy should integrate best practices in blogging, SEO, social media, PR, email marketing, lead nurturing, and marketing automation.
According to Paul Roetzer, content marketers of tomorrow will take the branded content to the next level through a few specific techniques, which include;
- The use of historical and predictive search patterns to drive content strategy
- Adapting content consumption patterns to a multi-screen world.
- The use of marketing automation to deliver sensitive aspects of the buying process.
- Tailor copy and calls to action to speak to specific needs, pain points, and behavioral triggers through the use of contextual data.
In a nutshell, as content marketing evolves, more sophisticated strategy and execution will be introduced.
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Challenges of Scaling Your Content Marketing in 2022
With the right strategy and execution, you can leverage content marketing to grow your business in 2022.
However, certain factors may make it difficult for you to scale your content marketing in 2022. Some of these factors are;
Lack of In-House Resources
Even if you have the most amazing content marketing plan, you can’t achieve anything without a content writing team.
It takes time and resources to create content. If you don’t have in-house resources to work with, there’s little or nothing you can do about your content creation.
If you are a startup with a slim budget, it may be pretty challenging to add people to your content writing team.
And when you try to get more content for your current creators, you tend to get lower-quality pieces.
So, it’s a bad idea to solely rely on your in-house team for your content marketing in 2022. You should delegate some content marketing tasks to an experienced digital marketing professional like Tycoon.
Delegating your content marketing task gives dynamism to your content and boosts the quality of the content you deliver to your audience.
Lack of Consistency
When scaling your content marketing in 2022, consistency is key. The more consistent you are with your content creation, the better results you will get.
When you are consistent with your writing pattern, graphics, and other branding elements, your audience tends to trust you easily.
I often tell entrepreneurs and business owners that consistency plays an important role in building trust with their audience.
For instance, the terminology you use to describe your products and services can give a different impression about you to your audience.
So, even if you want to outsource your content marketing, ensure that the freelancer or agency you outsourced to works closely with your in-house team.
That is why it’s important to have a style guide that every content creator in your team can use.
A good style guide harmonizes your writing voice, brand names, terminology, logos and ensures that every detail stays the same.
As a rule, try to have two style guides, one will be for content, and the other will be for graphics.
Not Paying Attention to Every Part of the Buyers’ Journey
Not paying attention to your buyer’s journey is one of the challenges of scaling your content marketing in 2022.
For instance, people who already know about your company and the products or services you offer won’t find an awareness-building article helpful.
These people are more interested in reading articles about your business models, what makes you unique, and why they should keep doing business with your company.
So, try to group your content into different stages of the buyer’s journey. And you need the right content for every stage to keep potential buyers moving in the right direction.
Not Maximizing Your Content Investment
One of the major challenges that could affect your ability to scale your content marketing in 2022 is not maximizing your content investment.
Most content entrepreneurs don’t maximize their content investment. All they do is post content on their website and move on to the next piece.
If you are currently doing this, your content marketing effort won’t yield the expected result in 2022.
The effort you put in planning, research, and creating your content will be wasted if you are into a one-and-done approach to content marketing.
It’s important to learn how you can maximize the potential of every piece of content. For instance, you can create an eBook from epic content (long article).
And you can offer that same eBook as a lead magnet to your website visitors. Interestingly, you have the option of summarizing chapters of the same eBook into articles and infographics, which you can also publish on your website.
Additionally, you can create a video on the same topic and post it on YouTube and across different social media platforms.
With this approach, you can create more content with fewer resources.
Not Having a Content Distribution Strategy
One of the major trends in content marketing in 2022 is to have a content distribution strategy for every content you create.
Not having a content distribution strategy can affect the effectiveness of your content marketing effort.
By the way, a content distribution strategy is a plan of action that helps you disseminate your content. It could promote your latest blog to your audience or share a new eBook.
Contrary to what you may think, creating content is just half of the job. The real deal is promoting the content to the right audience.
Regardless of how amazing your content seems, your effort would go to waste without a good distribution plan.
Unfortunately, some brands make the mistake of putting their content on every channel possible. Well, that is not how content distribution works.
You will only end up stretching yourself too thin, which could negatively affect how your audience interacts with your content.
A good rule of thumb is to focus on a few channels and grow your audience on those platforms. However, you can gradually include more platforms as your brand gains popularity.
Inefficient Processes
If your process is inefficient, there is no way you can get the best from your content marketing in 2022.
Your process is inefficient if you use time, energy, and other resources in the best way. You can’t scale your content marketing if your process is inefficient.
One of the reasons your process may be inefficient is when you want to handle everything yourself.
Most startup entrepreneurs always want to handle every aspect of their business themselves. They want to be in charge of marketing, accounting, and content creation.
Well, it’s not going to work, and one activity will always suffer. And most times, it’s your content marketing that will bear the brunt.
As a business owner, you should embrace technology and leverage it to run an efficient process.
Once your process is automated and optimized, you can easily eliminate tedious and unnecessary tasks that eat up your time.
So, focus more on leadership than frontline activities that you can easily delegate. Of course, there are countless cloud-based applications you can adopt to run your business efficiently.
These are some of the challenges that may affect your ability to scale your content marketing in 2022.
Once you can overcome these challenges, you can leverage content marketing to grow your business.
Create More Epic Content in 2022
2022 is the year of content creation; more content will be published than ever before. And this makes it really difficult for people to notice your content.
A recent study about content marketing revealed that 94% of online content has zero external links.
The question now is, how do you get more people to see your content in 2022? The simple answer is creating epic content.
What Exactly is Epic Content?
Epic content that’s so unique, in-depth, and impressive that people can’t ignore it.
It’s a type of content that makes people stop whatever they are doing to read, share, and possibly link it.
Epic content is the type that people find useful, inspiring, and highly engaging. And according to Neil Patel, epic content is the sweet spot between content marketing and brand utility.
The best strategy to acquire more leads and grow your revenue in 2022 is by producing high-quality content.
Do you know why you should put in more effort to create epic content?
It’s because most B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions.
And if you continuously create epic content for your audience, you will definitely rock their world.
Within a while, you will become a thought leader in your niche. I know you are surprised, but that is how effective epic content can be.
Once people find your content insightful, in-depth, and impressive, they trust you more. And you will become their go-to source for any niche-related question.
So, content marketing in 2022 is about getting your audience or potential customers to notice your content.
And the best way to do this is by creating high-quality content that gives them hope and addresses their pain points.
However, it’s not easy to create epic content. It takes time, resources, and effort. You have to carry out extensive research and be strategic with your output.
Creating compelling content is key to achieving your content marketing goals in 2022. I mean content people can’t ignore.
Once you create this type of content, influencers in your niche will start sharing it with their audience.
What are the Benefits of Creating Epic Content?
Epic content is not like any other content. It’s content that you put in your effort, time, and resources to create.
And your audience will definitely respect you for doing a great job. Just one epic piece of content could evolve your business into something bigger.
Yes, you read that correctly, just one epic content.
Funnily, you don’t have to tell people that the content they are reading is epic. No!!!
Epic content sells itself. It’s easily recognized. Don’t bother; create epic content and relax; it will sell itself.
Your audience will know it when they see epic content.
You may be wondering why you should invest so much time and resources to create just one article or video when you can easily create many more.
Let me tell you this…
Every content is created differently. While some may fail outrightly because of their quality, others may explode onto the web.
Here are some of the benefits of creating epic content;
Epic Content Gets More Attention
Generally, epic content grabs readers’ attention. They are always the best content on a particular topic. And that is why people easily notice and seek it out.
Epic Content Improves Brand Loyalty
Most times, epic content elevates readers’ experience beyond the norm. It builds trust and creates a better connection between you and your audience, leading to brand loyalty over time.
And when people are loyal to your brand because of the quality of your content, it improves communication, management, customer relationships, and customer services.
Epic Content Builds Authority
One good thing about creating epic content is that it helps you build authority in your niche.
Regardless of the products you sell or the services you offer, creating epic content will help you become a thought leader in no time.
For instance, in the digital marketing niche, some authority blogs that people easily reference are Tycoono, Brian Dean, Search engine Journal, Neil Patel, Search Engine Land, etc.
Even if you are new in your niche, people will notice you when you consistently conceptualize, research, and create content.
Epic Content Drives Traffic
If you take your time to create epic content, it will always go viral, which will get you more traffic.
The truth is, nothing stops epic content from driving traffic to your website. It doesn’t matter whether it’s through social media posts, search engines, or word-of-mouth referrals; your blog traffic will increase if you take your time to create viral content.
Epic Content Has the Potential to Go Viral
A well-written content spread as fast as wildfire. Once your content is epic, you don’t need to promote it.
If you don’t have a large audience yet, you can boost your epic content, but it takes less effort to promote.
Final Thought
Content marketing in 2022 will be different. And if you don’t take advantage of these trends to build your business, you may not remain competitive in the long run.
So, if you find content marketing boring or don’t have an in-house team to help you handle it, Tycoon can help you out.
We will deliver leading content marketing services that focus on growing your business. And our objective is to create a compelling content marketing strategy that delivers on your business goals.
So, what is your content marketing strategy in 2022?
Are you going to create more Video content or more epic content?
Kindly share your thoughts in the comment below.
