With each year, content marketers are seeing growing budgets and increasing complexity, urging them towards prioritising content strategy and optimisation of content processes. The Search Engine Journal has recapped six major changes in content marketing based on Semrush’s annual State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report.
Top trends for 2022
Focus on getting more human: improving, optimising and personalising your content for readers is key.
Targeting: content decisions should be based on extensive research, especially around search intent and content consumption. Companies are urged to expand their formats, discover the potential in short-form videos.
Set measurable goals: brands that achieve their goals approach content marketing strategically.
The makings of a successful content marketing strategy
According to Semrush, here are the top tactics that led to content marketing successes:
Improving the quality of our content (55%)
Search engine optimisation (46%)
Creating more video and visual content (41%)
The same report offers tips to optimise your content for increased visibility in search engines results and improved reader experience:
Create a title that tells readers what to expect.
Tell a story with your heading tags.
Add links to relevant content on your website.
Add links to relevant external resources that help the reader navigate between your advice and taking action.
Maintain a consistent and relevant tone of voice.
Improve overall readability using tools like the SEO Writing Assistant.
Focus on providing useful content and original research. This is the only way to differentiate yourself from the growing competition.
Key content marketing goals for 2022
As mentioned, setting goals is a crucial step for achieving success.
Content marketers have defined three key content marketing goals:
Increasing brand awareness (45%)
Attracting more traffic to our website (37%)
Generating leads (36%)
Three ways to increase brand awareness are highlighted:
Create non-branded, searchable content to capture the attention of people who are not familiar with your brand but are seeking more information about a relevant topic.
Publish on other websites in your industry that already have a large readership that matches your target audience.
Diversify your content across blog posts, videos, podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, etc. This will allow you to capture audiences at all stages of the buyers’ journey.
Key areas of content marketing investment for 2022
Content marketing budgets for 2022 will be split between the following areas:
Building community on social media (41%)
Increasing the quality of written content (40%)
Increasing content promotion and distribution (40%)
To increase the quality of written content Search Engine Journal recommends to make sure that:
Your content is original.
Your content answers a question that your target audience frequently asks.
Your content was created with a specific intention or goal.
Your content has strong headlines.
Google searches on content marketing are increasing
The following graph illustrates the top searched queries on Google (2021 vs 2022):
Most popular content marketing topics
Having an overview of the most popular topics will provide insight on the overall trends that are leading the industry.
Most popular content marketing topics of 2022:
Content marketing tools
Corporate content marketing
Social media content marketing
Content marketing trends
B2B content marketing strategy
Download The State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report here.