5 Content Marketing Strategies For The Future

An effective content marketing strategy depends on the strength of the content published on a site. Formerly, this meant having interesting, compelling articles with a few attractive images and perhaps a viral video, but all that is changing.

Content Marketing is growing, bringing new content types that SEOs who want to stand apart from the crowds can leverage. The following are some of the content types that you should consider including in your current content marketing campaign:

1. Live streaming

If you attended SXSW this year, then you know a little something about Meerkat, which is a live streaming app that allows your friends on Twitter to see what you’re seeing, real-time.

The Meerkat’s team’s win high after the SXSW was suddenly cut short following Twitter’s move to acquire a competing app, Periscope. After this, Twitter limited the former app’s access to its social graph. Given that technology is about copying what the other has, we can expect that soon Facebook will update its app to introduce live streaming capabilities for its billion-plus following.
Regardless of the app or network that will end up with the best live streaming functionality, the sure thing is that 2015 will see billions of live stream content shared among users. Therefore, marketers, best prepare themselves to take advantage of this new content type.

Almost obviously, a workable scheme might be to encourage brand users and consumers to live stream their product experience. For instance, a business that dabbles in clothing design with a chain of retail outlets might use incentives to encourage consumers to live stream their shopping experience at the outlets. It will help getting friends to weigh in on various outfits, asking questions and giving answers, that sort of thing.

The same can be done for sporting events, music concerts and events, tourist destinations, hotels and restaurants, art galleries and museums, bars and clubs etc., basically any physical location that commoditize experiences.

You can give incentive to 10% of purchases for shoppers who live stream and tag the brand page. Also, you could train your retail store managers and staffers to execute a “shopper’s delight” experience for lucky customers found live streaming their shopping experience.
We’re also likely to brands inviting opinion leaders and influencers to promote their products by live streaming their encounters. It’s like a product review with an edge, and we can expect viral excitement around this new fad.

2. Augmented Reality

Magic Leap recently launched its video show that casts its augmented reality capability within a video game. Augmented reality is about adding an extra dimension onto what your eye see for real by overlaying virtual elements on them. A great application is creating a virtual piece of clothing so that you can ‘try it on’ without having the actual clothing with you.

For clothing brands, for instance, this means that your online repertoire should be updated to including virtual products in high-resolution besides to product images and videos. Naturally, these virtual products would also include Meta product descriptions such as color, size, inventory information, material, sale information, washing instructions among others.

You can take it a step further and include information on celebrities and/or customers’ friends with similar outfits, social contests for how best to wear an outfit, recommended accessories, skin tone and seasonal color guides, footwear recommendations among others. There’s no limit to what you can do with AR.

3. Virtual reality

 
Much like the previous example, virtual reality can also give users a complete user-product experience, only virtually. Virtual reality takes AR a step further in that it takes the user away from their physical surrounding and plunges them into a wholly digital world.

If we use the example from above, clothing lines/clothing retail stores will create a comprehensive virtual shopping experience by developing a virtual store. A user would then meet up with other users within the virtual store and take part in a virtual shopping trip privately, with the option of making real purchases online. Looks like the future of e-commerce.

Of course, AR and VR are not only limited to shopping. Shampoo and hair product brands loading videos on YouTube can create 3D virtual experiences for their sites as well. For instance, a consumer could stand behind a professional stylist with their salon (virtually) to see exactly how the stylist executes a certain style. Or join a makeup artist prepping some Hollywood star for their next scene.

Virtual reality will certainly add oomph to user engagement once it goes mainstream.

4. Podcasting

Looks like technology, like fashion is also going cyclic, given that podcasting has made a big comeback to the scene with the advancement of Smartphone technology. Instead of listening to a few tracks during your commute or while you’re busy with something, why not tune into some episodes of your favorite podcast?

Research has shown that more than 39 million Americans listened to podcasts in a single month last year. That represents 15% of the population, and the number is growing by 25% annually. Brands go where consumers are going, which means the next step for you is to embrace podcasting.

Get a head start on it and build a loyal following before your competitors swoop in.

5. Nanobots

Research has shown that the US military has developed technology to control miniature robots inside a body wirelessly. Of course, the immediate application would be to diagnose medical malfunctions and execute curative therapies. Nevertheless, in a few more years and advancement in nanobot innovations, don’t be surprised if nanobots are used to deliver directly messages to the brain.
These may be in a form of images, sounds, and other media forms. Imagine where you could transmit a message to another person’s brain by simply thinking it – the possibilities for a marketer are endless, eerily so. However, at least you have at least a decade or more before you have to think about that.

So, which one will you be going for next?

Author Bio:Lalit Sharma is an SEO consultant who runs a SEO house called Ranking By SEO. He is specialized in link building and other SEO related activities. You can also find him on Twitter, Google+ and his personal blog.