5 Content Marketing Trends for 2023
When you’re a busy brand with a lot on your plate, it’s easy to forget about giving content marketing the attention it deserves. For example, say you’re a wellness product company breaking through the busy supplement industry.
You’re so busy brainstorming new additions to your product lineup, fielding collaboration offers from fitness influencers and getting orders shipped out that… content marketing quickly falls to the bottom of your priority list.
When your brand is taking off, it only makes sense that you would devote most of your time and energy to what you have the most experience with — creating the best product possible and getting it to your customers.
However, with the right marketing team on your side, content marketing can help support that goal without drawing your attention away from what really matters.
The best part of content marketing is that every accomplishment and milestone your brand achieves can inspire great content. Your own successes are an excellent source of inspiration for engaging blog posts — you just have to invest the time to actually write them. A great marketing agency knows how to combine your brand’s unique story and ongoing developments with the latest trends in online media to create truly engaging content.
This is our guide to some of the most important content marketing trends every brand should know about in 2023. Read on to find out key strategies that are essential for creating a successful content marketing plan.
1. Purpose-Driven Content
Customers increasingly expect the content produced by a brand or company to have a clear, meaningful purpose at its core. Consider Burt’s Bees — all of their products are marketed as being good for both customers and the environment. From skincare products designed for sensitive skin to baby clothes made with organic cotton, the intention to promote meaningful qualities like environmentally-friendly, all-natural and non-toxic items is consistent across their product lineup. Their own company blog covers topics related to this purpose as well, from highlighting conscious beauty influencers to sharing tips on composting at home.
Purpose-driven content works when it ties one of your brand’s core values or messages to a greater societal issue like sustainability (as in the case of Burt’s Bees) or equality. Instead of simply providing information about a product or demonstrating how to use it, each piece of content should help illustrate your brand's commitment to or interest in a deeper purpose.
This particular content marketing trend is an opportunity for brands to participate in global conversations that are relevant to their values and to their customers. Purpose-driven content makes for successful content marketing by allowing a brand and members of its audience to bond over mutual concern for different causes and purposes.
It also strengthens your brand’s image in the public eye by boosting the authenticity and integrity of the company, and fosters customer loyalty in the long-run. After all, customers are looking for brands that they can trust — and nothing boosts trust like a shared commitment to a meaningful cause.
2. Use ChatGPT As A Helper — Not A Replacement
The potential for AI to generate content on its own is creating quite a buzz in the media world and beyond. It seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT. Earlier this year, actor Ryan Reynolds even tasked ChatGPT with writing an ad script for his phone company Mint Mobile, which he filmed and posted to his YouTube page. He dubbed the results, meant to mimic his usual satirical voice, “mildly terrifying”.
One of the main reasons that ChatGPT continues to make headlines is the perception that it will eventually replace human involvement in content creation, whether that means coming up with a unique take on an ad or writing an effective blog post. While ChatGPT certainly can create entire articles and pieces of content on its own, a successful content marketing strategy can’t be built out of AI-generated content alone.
ChatGPT is best used as a helper — not a replacement. In the matchup between human and AI content creators, ChatGPT has many limitations that take it out of the running for first place. It tends to produce formal, unnatural sounding content and will make up what it doesn’t know. It’s also susceptible to biases, hasn’t been updated since 2021 and lacks the ability to make nuanced emotional connections with readers.
All in all, ChatGPT is no substitute for an experienced human content writer. At best, the articles and posts it generates can be used as a starting off point that your marketing team can then customize to match your brand’s voice and messaging goals. When you want to make sure your content sounds natural, includes accurate information, captures your brand’s personality and has a strong emotional core, you need a real, live writer to have a hand in its creation.
3. Storytelling SEO
Relying too heavily on traditional SEO tactics can lead to content that falls flat or seems like it was written by a robot. High-quality SEO-optimized content isn’t just about the number of keywords you can fit in a single article or how many backlinks you have. Storytelling SEO is a new content marketing trend that takes into account recent changes in how Google ranks content.
The quality of each piece of content and the expertise displayed in it are becoming much more important than statistics like tags or keywords alone in ranking. While it’s still important to use SEO strategies, the story that a piece is telling should be the first priority.
Search engines have begun to prioritize content that expertly tells a story that customers want to hear. When a piece has a clear purpose that addresses a commonly searched need and serves as an authority on a specific topic, it’s more likely to rank well.
Writers from Tigar Agency are journalists — aka professional storytellers. We excel at storytelling SEO without sounding like robots. We have experience balancing SEO techniques with high-quality narrative content to create blog articles that tell a story and rank well.
4. Multi-Purpose Content with Value
Successful content marketing produces content that has value and can fill multiple needs. Value-added content gives the audience exclusive information that can only be found in that blog article, social media post or video. It relies on creatively addressing a specific need or concern shared by your audience in a direct way. This inspires the audience to seek out that particular piece of content in order to gain access to compelling information that contains the answers to their questions.
To build on this content marketing trend, every piece of content should also be able to serve multiple needs. You can use each unique piece of content as a jumping off point to inspire other forms of media creation. For example, you might start with a press release on a new product that promotes stress relief. Then, you could create an ebook on how to live a healthy lifestyle, including examples of how the new product can help. Finally, you could write a blog post on 5 ways the product can elevate your morning routine, or 10 examples of healthy lifestyle strategies — including trying out your product.
5. Executive Leadership Content
Successful content marketing helps build trust for your brand. Thought leadership is one content marketing trend that can help you achieve this goal. Executive thought leadership is an opportunity for your brand to share insights that are unique to your company’s individual experience. The best pieces of content to showcase this are ones focused on expertise only your brand can provide.
As an example, imagine a big beauty company. Tigar Agency would interview the CEO or founder of the company and talk to them about their passion for the industry, their values and what goals and projects they have in mind for the future.
We would then take insights from this interview and turn them into content topics and then pieces that could be published in a business or trade publication. A business journal’s roundup of 5 beauty companies to watch in 2023 could include highlights from the founder’s interview, like the origin story and their hopes for expanding the company’s reach and product line.
Create a Successful Content Marketing Plan with Tigar
Content marketing trends are constantly evolving. As a result, it can be tough to juggle staying current on these trends, producing quality content and taking your business to the next level all at once. Luckily, you don’t have to do it all yourself when you have a great marketing agency like Tigar Agency on your team.
Tigar Agency is up to date on the most effective and innovative content marketing trends out there. We can help determine which trends are a good match for your brand, based on your marketing goals, brand personality and the type of content you’re interested in. We can also take those trends and turn them into well-written, effective content that gets you the results you want.
To find out more about how we can create and carry out a successful content marketing plan for your brand, reach out today.
