Weekly Content Marketing Trends June 15th, 2022

Spring has sprung, and many areas of the country are already cresting into summer. As the weather heats up, the content does, too, and there are all sorts of exciting new content marketing trends to keep track of this week!

Whether you’re looking for ways to spice up your content or want to hire an agency to do it for you, we’ve got the cutting-edge methods you need.

Quicklinks:

Content Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: Top 11 Tips

Content Marketing Best Practice Guide

What is a Content Marketing Matrix?

6 Was to Determine if Your Content Marketing Team is Delivering Results

Episodic Content, Instagram Encouraging Users to Think “Beyond Hashtags,” and “Always-On” Content

There’s a lot to break down this week, but we’re focusing on three big things: episodic content, Instagram content marketing strategy changes, and the idea of always-on content.

Let’s get into it.

Trend #1: Episodic Content

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Episodic content isn’t entirely new, but it’s just starting to catch on with marketers everywhere. To put it simply, episodic content is short, sequential video or social content organized as part of a series on a specific topic or theme. Think of it as the content marketing world’s version of a binge-able Netflix series.

In a world of shortening consumer attention spans and increasing demand for personalization, episodic content helps brands increase their visibility, shorten the sales cycle, and use resources wisely.

If you want to create episodic content for your brand, here are a few quick tips:

Pick the right theme. Episodic content needs a strong theme to be successful. This requires knowing your audience well and choosing a topic that will hold interest. Here’s a tip: take your popular evergreen blogs or videos and use them as the foundation for new episodic content.
Keep the narrative strong. Once you’ve decided on your theme, you need characters and a narrative to support it. We recommend creating a storyboard to help visualize the trajectory of the content and keep your end goal in mind.
Leave it on a cliffhanger. Leave your audience hungry for more. Instead of delivering everything in the first episode, take a big concept and divide it up into bite-sized chunks, so they have to keep coming back for the next “fix.”

Trend #2: Instagram is Changing How Users Think About Content Strategy

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For years, Instagram has been a popular content marketing tool. And for a good reason: Instagram is the 4th most popular social platform in the world, and the average engagement for posts from Instagram business accounts is 0.83%.

Don’t let its “household name” status fool you, though. Instagram is far from some stagnant monolith. In fact, the platform is constantly changing the way it does things. Recently, Insta launched a series designed to help users master the art of Instagram marketing.

In a recent part of that series, the head of Instagram - Adama Mosseri - unveiled that Instagram’s algorithm is not, in fact, all about the #hashtag. Sure, they’re important, but so are other content marketing pillars marketers tend to overlook on Instagram.

The takeaway? If you want to improve your Instagram marketing, stop focusing so much on creating the perfect hashtag. Instead, do these things:

Use nicknames to your advantage. You probably already know that your handle and profile names should relate to the content you post on Instagram. What you might not know, though, is that brands with a popular nickname should include it in their profile and/or handle.
Incorporate keywords in your bio. You incorporate high-value keywords into your blog posts, right? Right! You should also be adding them to your Instagram bio. If you run a location-specific business, include geotags and location keywords, as well.
Add keywords and hashtags in captions, not comments. A while back, it became popular for brands to tuck hashtags away in a comment under a post, where they wouldn’t make a caption feel “too long.” Unfortunately, this approach ALSO hides them from Instagram’s algorithm. Instead, put your hashtags in the caption, where they belong.

Trend #3: “Always On” Content Marketing

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For years, brands have organized their content marketing efforts around campaigns or “pushes.” Today, however, the best and brightest in the content marketing world are saying we should be thinking about it differently: our websites never sleep, so why should our content?

Instead of focusing on campaigns, a content strategy should be “always-on,” meaning it’s scalable, automated, and backed by technology like automation and artificial intelligence.

Here are a few quick tips for dipping your toe in the “always-on” content pool:

Take the long view. Moving away from campaign-focused content requires you to start taking the long view of your content, rather than taking it one campaign at a time. Do this by leveraging all the data you have access to and getting serious about learning who your audience is, how they behave, and what they need from your content.
Prioritize personalization. Personalization is CRITICAL when it comes to content creation. The more you increase personalization, the more engagement you’ll enjoy.

Time to Take Your Content to the Next Level? Scripted Writers are Here for You!

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There are a lot of moving parts involved in creating a great content strategy, and it can be tough to keep track of them all. Fortunately, you don’t need to. Scripted is a leader in the content marketing industry, and we’re here to help!

Over the years, we’ve worked with thousands of clients in a massive variety of industries, and we’re prepared to help you position yourself as the in-demand authority in your niche. Want to learn more?

Published by Ciara Antolini on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Content Marketing, Blogs, Content Strategy, Weekly Trends.