Watch These Three Trends in #ContentMarketing in 2017

What’s cooking in 2017 for #ContentMarketing? Not sure, but here’s what caught people’s attention on Twitter for the last month. This might show where things are heading in 2017.

Method

We examined the most retweeted (English language) tweets for the last 30 days, and then divided the number of retweets per tweet by the originator’s number of followers. This gives an engagement ratio. Then we weeded out the pure promotional tweets. Thus the result is both quantitative and qualitative.

Boosting content generation productivity

The most engaging post was from @devumi which pointed to a post on @copyblogger about boosting content generation productivity and quality.

The author of the post relates how her mentor shared a simple content creation checklist… “by following her version of the checklist, she’s able to create a video, a livestream, a podcast episode, a blog post, multiple social media posts, and additional free education on top of that — every single day“.

The first item on the checklist is to have a “mindset practice” which you deploy each morning to clear your head and to prepare for work.

What does this mean for 2017? Whether you are a sole practitioner or a large company creating good content productivity is becoming a bigger challenge. At the end of the say, no matter how small or large a firm, people are the ones which create the content.

Focusing on how to do this effectively while people also have their “day to day” jobs will be something which gets more attention in 2017. Perhaps this is why this post was top of the engagement list. Interestingly it’s practical advice might also explain why this post had 340X the engagement rate of more general posts on Content Strategy by a leading “influencer” on the topic.

Effective B2B content marketing

B2B and B2C content marketing have their unique styles, and in this piece of popular shared content @metasfresh refers to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute.

“A big surprise from the report is that, despite these huge adoption rates, only 30% of B2B marketers rate their organisations’ content marketing efforts as being “effective” – down from 38% in 2015.”

What does this mean for 2017? Key to success is having clear goals for the B2B content investments and campaigns. Knowing the difference between wanting to drive downloads, gain email subscribers, take people to product pages, or build brand reputation around innovation, for example, will drive successful content strategy.

Getting influencer attention

The role of influencers is hotly debated and the art of influencer selection is a key to success. @Shane_Barker points to A smart guide to getting influencer attention online in his 3rd most engaging tweet on Content Marketing.

The article answers the question “if I send a message to an influencer, it will just be deleted or ignored?“.

Although it is a bit of a spammy post the suggestions and “what to avoid doing” contain advice relevant to individuals and corporate people thinking about the issue of how to identify and engage with the appropriate influencers. The ranking of the post as the 3rd most engaging indicates that many are looking at how to do influencer marketing effectively.

What does it mean for 2017? There is no shortcut to identifying the best influencers and being able to engage them on your behalf. Those in B2C and B2B who succeed have a skill and assets which will increasingly represent a competitive advantage. Remember, anyone can open a chequebook for celebrity endorsements, which is why they are essentially worthless. But bringing serious influencers on board is a serious business.

Summary

Effective content marketing remains top of mind for marketers into 2017 and a focus on being more focused, being more productive, and on effectively building relationships with the right influencers will be necessary in order to deliver the goods.