It’s become somewhat of a tradition to start the year by sharing my content marketing predictions for the year ahead.
I love this time of year, a time for reflection on the year gone by, and planning for the year ahead. At Content 10x, we are always looking at what’s working and not working, what’s hot and not…regardless of the time of year. In fact, with social media in particular, given its pace, I wonder what a ‘social media year’ really is, it probably compares to five years!
Nonetheless, the start of the new year means planning, working out new strategies, and goal setting. If you’d like to look at my content marking predictions for 2019 click here. Last year I shared 5 predictions, this year, I’m treating you to 3 more. Here are my 8 predictions for 2020.
Let’s jump in…
1. More focus on video content — particularly on YouTube
You may have heard me, and many other people, talk about a Cisco research study that predicted that by 2020 80% of content consumed online would be video. And guess what, it’s 2020!!
Time will tell if that prediction is right.
The indisputable fact is that people do like to consume a lot of video content and marketers/business owners/content creators need to pay attention to this.
I’m not saying anything new here, I know that. But I do think that video is going to become a lot more of a focus for people who perhaps haven’t really paid much attention to creating video content in the past.
Look at a few clues here as to the importance of video content. For instance at Social Media Marketing World in 2020 there are 4 video tracks as part of the event. This is because Michael Stelzner, CEO of Social Media Examiner (who host Social Media Marketing World), and his team, recognize the demand to teach video marketing skills. It’s what people want and need.
It’s also really important to look at how we consume video content. We’re all getting very used to commercial-free video content through on-demand streaming with Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Now TV, Netflix, YouTube Red — these are all places that we consume video maybe even more so than regular and cable TV. Because we are paying, we do not have commercials. We get used to this. We are more conditioned than we have ever been before to not to expect commercials.
I think this should be considered when businesses and marketers create video content. If you are planning on creating video ads, for YouTube for example, then bear in mind that people are really going to start wanting to see fewer and fewer ads (they are used to this). So, your advert better be good, well-targeted, and appear native/less intrusive YET cause enough of a pattern interrupt for people to take note.
2. LinkedIn will be the platform for live video
In episode 92 of the Content 10x podcast way back in July 2019 I spoke to Ian Anderson Gray about LinkedIn Live — How to Get Started with LinkedIn Live. Back then, we talked about how it was not available for everyone and it was gradually being rolled out (by request only), it wasn’t native and you had to use a 3rd party software to stream to LinkedIn.
Well…that is still the case now as I publish this post. Not everyone has the live-streaming feature on LinkedIn, and you need to use software if you do have access and want to go live, e.g. Switcher Studio, StreamYard, Restream.io and many others.
However, I predict that in 2020 things will open up more. LinkedIn live-streaming will be more accessible and we’ll see people embrace it. LinkedIn has asked people, so far, to apply for live streaming access largely to try and control the quality of live content, but I think that’s hard to do and volume will take over soon.
3. More IGTV
Yep…another video content prediction! I think more people are going to start using IGTV in 2020. It’s not new at all, but it’s gone through ups and down with interest and usage.
I think Instagram making some changes to the platform has really improved the experience. Particular examples are that you can post up to a 10-minute video to IGTV and select to show the start of the video as a normal IG post. This migrates more people over to IGTV to watch the rest of the video…and consume more content whilst over there.
I think more people will start to use IGTV and also, I think more creators will repurpose video content from their website, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn or elsewhere onto IGTV.
4. More video to podcast repurposing (and more focus on the quality of audio in video content)
Another prediction related to video content! I think we’ll see more people creating video content with the intention of repurposing it into a podcast episode.
More and more people are realizing that this is a possibility. This is something that I’ve been speaking about for a while and we do this for a lot of our clients.
This doesn’t work for everyone. It really does depend on the kind of videos that you are creating. For example, if its video content designed to be visual/seen, what kind of environment your video recording in, is it in noisy surroundings…etc.
Creating the perfect video to podcast repurposing strategy
Done well, this can result in a perfect repurposing strategy. We worked with Jay Baer to create the videos and the podcast episodes for his Talk Triggers Show.
We created highly engaging videos where we brought in b-roll, images and music, but we made sure it was also an engaging podcast episode too. You didn’t need to see anything on screen to enjoy the content, and we made sure the audio quality was top notch.
I think that when video content creators realize that the audio could be used for podcasts or other means, this will trigger more focus on the quality of audio with videos.
For more on this see 4 Tips on How to Convert Video to Audio and Repurposing Your Video by Launching a (Brand New) Podcast.
If you want to repurpose your videos, then that’s something we can help you with — click here.
5. Podcasting will continue to grow and grow
The number of people listening to podcasts will rise. The number of people creating podcasts will rise too. I call this a prediction but I think it’s pretty much a fact. Podcasting is a growth industry and medium.
We’ll see more people teaching people how to podcast, more podcast coaches and more podcast tools, resources and software (some necessary, many unnecessary!).
I think this is a good thing, but I also think you shouldn’t just start a podcast for the sake of it.
Podcasting is not easy (despite some people you may see online who give that impression…including coaches who teach you to launch a podcast but don’t have one themselves…take what you want from that!).
It’s hard work, and requires patience to see results.
Start a podcast if you are clear on why, you are totally dedicated to it, and you have a plan. Don’t just do one every now and then, with no strategy.
An option to get in front of podcast listeners isn’t always to start your own, you can get onto other podcasts as a guest. This is a good place to start.
If you are keen to start a podcast, and it feels like 2020 is your year, then that is great!! Be sure to head to our blog
and search on podcast content to find lots and lots of advice on repurposing your podcast content. Also, get a copy of my book too.
I recommend Captivate as your podcast host.
6. New approaches to paid advertising
Without question, there is less organic reach on social media platforms, and the cost of advertising is rising considerably on social.
Customer acquisition costs are high, and getting higher on social media, and whilst some organizations can afford the rising costs, I think many will look into adopting new approaches and experimenting more.
2020 is going to be an interesting year for paid advertising. With social media, I think we’ll see more people using Instagram Stories (organic) and more people advertising in Instagram Stories. This is far from saturated at the moment, and if done well, it’s very effective.
7. More tailoring of content for voice search and zero-click Google search results
Voice search on our smart speakers, and or just using Siri, Alexa…etc, on our mobile devices, is becoming more sophisticated. Accuracy has improved a lot in the past couple of years. More and more people are getting used to asking Alexa, or similar, a question and getting an answer.
There’s a lot of talk in the content marketing world about creating content that will be more tailored for voice search. So, creating content that is in more of a Q&A style. Being short, clear and concise and thinking about what people would specifically ask.
This approach isn’t just for voice search, but also because a lot of Google searches no longer result in the click. People get their answers from the results page and don’t even have to click off the page.
How can you create content that answers questions in this way?
To explain a bit more, SparkToro’s Google clickstream data study.
In August 2019, found that for the first time, the majority of Google searches (50.33%) ended without a click on an organic or paid search result.
We can clearly see that Google’s attempt to answer more searches without a click to any results OR that result in a click to Google’s own properties are proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned sites keep on rising.
The question is, can we find ways to get value from zero-click searches?
We can make sure we have an answer on a Google owned property, e.g. on YouTube, on Google maps for local businesses…
Do your research and create short and concise answers to questions that could appear as a snippet.
Study the results that are dominating the no-click returns on Google and create similarly formatted content.
8. TikTok will inspire more creativity (in snackable formats)
TikTok is a little bit crazy! It’s all video content and it’s generally 15 seconds long. It’s absolutely fair to say that the main users are young people — mainly teenagers.
Gary Vaynerchuk is insisting it’ll come around to be more mainstream and we should all be posting there now. I’m not sure whether he is right but…I think he could be. I believe this more so than when he said that about Snapchat! I’m not sure how it could be used for business but at the end of the day it’s all about building an audience. I’m keen to monitor and explore TikTok.
What I think will happen, regardless of whether are on TikTok or not, is that people will observe the content over there, which is often really creative. People will start to become more creative on other platforms too e.g. on Instagram Stories.
I’ve started doing this myself. I’m on TikTok (@content10x), I had one viral post where I jumped in sand dunes and it went viral. And, because of that I’ve thousands of followers! But I’m not really using it. However, I’ve observed the fun and creative content on TikTok, created similar content but related to my content/message, and shared it on other platforms. For example, I created a cool video celebrating International Podcast Day, that was in a TikTok viral video style, and I got great comments when posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!
Overall, I think people will have more fun with their content, especially micro content — you have 15 secs to make people laugh, let’s do this! (if it’s on brand for you, of course).
There you have it, my 8 content predictions for 2020. I love to hear your thoughts, please comment below.
Thanks for reading!
Say Hello on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Originally published at https://www.content10x.com on January 2, 2020.
