Get Ahead of the Marketing Race with These Content Trends

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Marketing is a race and we all want to get ahead of the game. But effective brand marketing is not only about knowing what works now, but also preparing for what’s coming in the future.

Here are upcoming trends to consider when planning out your marketing strategy.

How to Use Storytelling to Effectively Market Your Brand

At Pubcon 2016 in Las Vegas, Brent Csutoras, SEJ’s Chief Social Media Strategist, sat down with Katy Katz, Content Director at Inturact, to talk about how storytelling can be used to effectively market your brand.

Here Are Some Key Takeaways from Her Interview:

• Storytelling is telling authentic stories about your brand. You can make it more effective by telling stories about what’s going on inside your brand or things that are going on with your customers. Personalizing experiences and talking more about the stories really helps.
• The way to tell good stories is to read more and write a lot. Practice writing and doing different types of writing exercises. Storytelling can add spice to your content, even if it’s just little bits interlaced between your analogy. It can help drive emotional connection.
• There are three steps to telling good stories:
  • Speak to a real persona or target audience you’ve defined.
  • Have a beginning, middle, and end — a plot line you can think of that could have a big impact.
  • The end of your story should drive your point and your call to action.
• You can create a storybook for a more visual feel. You can also create outlines to see the flow of your story. Make sure you have something to hook people in and get them interested in what you’re saying.

For more storytelling tips, explore the following resources:

Upcoming Trends for Visual and Regular Content in 2017

In this interview at Pubcon 2016 in Las Vegas, Matt Siltala, President and Founder of Avalaunch Media, shares his insights on the upcoming trends for visual and regular content in 2017. You can listen to the podcast version of his interview at the top or bottom of this article.

Here Are Some Key Takeaways from the Interview:

• 360-degree photos and videos give a fun twist to content. They may be used next for infographics. 360 videos are especially useful for the real-estate market in showcasing houses and showing where these houses are, and also for cruise lines to show what you can expect on your next vacation. 360 videos give you the perspective of being part of the experience.
• We will also see more of virtual reality in games, websites, videos, and other experiences.
• As wearable devices become more popular, we should think about the kind of content we’ll be serving up there. We should be conscious of the size of content and the audience that consumes this content. We should also think of the best ways to serve content on wearable devices.
• Live streaming is another upcoming trend. You can show specific events to your audience. You can also share promo codes and giveaways targeted to your live audience. Live streaming is a way to get people to view your content and can cater to their fear of missing out.

For more information on live streaming, explore the following resources:

 

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Screenshot by Rina Caballar. Taken November 2016.

Podcast: Download

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