Our Top 3 Content Marketing Resolutions for 2022

The new year is here, and with it a time to reflect on what the future of content marketing will hold.

It’s a time to refine our strategies in how we’ll focus our energies, strengthen our messaging, and better reach our intended audiences.

It’s where we look back on success of the previous year and predict trends for the coming year. Sort of like business new year’s resolutions.

Here are our top 3 content marketing resolutions for 2022:

1. Mobile-friendly sites are our top priority

A few years ago, Google announced their mobile-first indexing initiative, where the mobile version of site would be the one crawled and indexed for search engine ranking. This makes sense when you consider that almost 93% of global internet users access the internet through their mobile devices. Google has been migrating to mobile-first indexing ever since that first announcement, and now it is fully the default condition.

As SearchEngine Journal points out, you shouldn’t stop perfecting your desktop site’s performance and SEO, but you should pay even more attention to your mobile site. Make sure it’s responsive, user-friendly, Googlebot-friendly, and definitely not just an afterthought. And don’t forget to concentrate on load times. Page speed is, in fact, used in mobile search ranking.

2. Continued focus on top-performing content forms

The good news is content marketing was up 17% YOY. Plus, companies who aren’t currently using it (give us a buzz!) are seeing the value, as those newly intending to invest in content marketing was up 64.7% YOY. The other good news is the types of our best performing content will continue to be the ones we champion in 2022 (with maybe one new friend). Let’s take a closer look at the top types of content we should concentrate on in 2022:

A. Video

Video will continue to be the best performing content of 2022. Videos are so well adapted to fit in many places in your marketing efforts (e.g., embedding in websites and blogs, sharing on social media, curating on video channel), that 76% of video-using marketers call it their most effective content format—with 27% saying it yields the most ROI.

B. Blogs

Blogs continue to be strong content performers. Often, blogs and video are cited as the primary focus of content marketers, and with good reason. In a survey of customers, 56% report purchasing something after reading a blog. Now you’re writing with power! Keep in mind when you are searching for new blog topics to delight that Statista reports how-to articles and news & trends articles are the most popular blog forms.

C. Social Media

Many marketers measure content success in web traffic and sales (since these are two things our content is created to support), but we can’t forget the social metric. Indeed, year over year, social engagement as a metric has increased 187%. One thing to note: slightly more companies are using Instagram over Facebook, but Facebook generates over 10% more ROI than Instagram. Only you know where your customers are best reached—but do keep that statistic in the back of your head when planning your ad spend.

D. Email

By 2025, Statista estimates there will be around 4.6 billion email users (up from 4 billion in 2021)—an increase of almost 15%. And email marketing revenue is expected to grow exponentially with it, hitting around $17.9 billion by 2027. It’s no surprise, then, that 77% of companies are seeing more engagement with email marketing year over year. It needs to be strategic and well thought out, but email marketing continues to be a great performer.

E. Podcasts

In a recent US podcast advertising revenue study, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that podcast ad revenue could reach $2 billion by 2023. That means revenue will increase more in the last two years than it has in the last decade! Sort of like pictureless videos, podcasts are even easier to assemble than their visual cousins. Transcribed podcasts can also be leveraged and repurposed as blog posts and other long-form content, and can also lead to more backlinks as other sites quote and reference the audio.

3. Using our content for more

Content marketing uses our content to rank higher in search engines, spread our message and mission, and to inform, engage, and convert visitors to leads to customers. As digital marketing influencer Jeff Bullas points out, 2022 should be the year you commit to using your content marketing to not only attract customers, but also retain them.

Gone are the days of only ushering users through the sales journey. We need to make sure our content continues to engage current customers to make sure they become repeat customers. And not just repeat customers, but customers who will believe in our services and products, share our vision and messages, and even create and spread their own content showcasing our awesomeness.

By focusing on mobile-friendly versions of our content, by championing our best performing content types, and by using content to continually engage with our customers even after they are customers, we will truly wow them with our content marketing. When you need help taking your content marketing strategy to the next level, AdsIntelligence Marketing is ready to make your new year truly happy. Let us know how we can help.