What’s Next for Content Marketing and SEO?
Increased focus on content will provide new challenges as more businesses invest in the area. Competition for those lucrative top spots in organic search results, is likely to increase further as more and more businesses adopt a content focused strategy. More competition in paid search too, means that budgets will need to increase in order to support the higher bids necessary to maintain visibility.
As social media reaches full maturity, so the techniques being used to
build and grow communities will need to be revised and sharpened in
order to rise above the hubbub
When it comes to social media, in order to rise above the high level of noise generated by increased adoption, boosting visibility will become even more crucial. Paid advertising, for example promoted posts and Facebook ads, will become increasingly necessary in order to reach customers. This means that companies who choose not to invest in this area and SMEs who simply don’t have the resources, will gradually loose out to competitors with deeper pockets.
Branding will become ever more important as businesses need to stand out from the competition. Smaller businesses whose activities are not currently strategically driven, will need to up their game in terms of both understanding and conveying their USPs and they will also need to get smart about how they measure their success and how they devise actionable insights.
If small businesses can remain both creative and agile, they will be able to grow their communities and more importantly, they’ll be able to leverage the power of those communities to their advantage. I’m pretty certain then that in 2014 we will see more investment into not just content marketing and relationship building, but into branding too.
Whilst opportunities will continue exist for those of us not lucky enough to have an internationally recognizable brand or large budgets, It’s not going to be easy. As 2014 progresses, small businesses will learn that investing in content marketing and developing their brand isn’t optional, it’s something they have to do in order to maintain their online visibility.
Marketing Insights for 2014
- Greater competition as the volume of content being published and promoted online continues to increase, making paid search more necessary
- Increased need to differentiate, making branding all important
- Increasingly necessary to pay for social media advertising alongside existing organic activities
- Social media continues to be an important communications with Increased adoption of Pinterest, particularly for online retailers and increased business adoption of YouTube
- Responsive design will become even more widespread as the use of mobile devices for browsing the internet continues to increase
- Greater use of location based marketing, primarily Google Places/Google+ local
- Smarter metrics necessary in order to obtain clearer insights and more accurately measure ROI
- Strategically driven activities will become ever more widespread as social media reaches maturity
- Creativity, agility and innovation will become more important in helping marketers to grab and hold the attention of their audiences
