Best content marketing trends for 2020

77% of companies have a content marketing strategy. Every year, marketers should revamp their strategies on content marketing. Do you know ...

77% of companies

have a content marketing strategy. Every year, marketers should revamp their strategies on content marketing. Do you know how to adapt your content marketing strategy to fit the demands of 2020 marketing?

Here are 2020 content marketing trends you should know, based on the Global State of Content Marketing Report by SEMrush.

Content Marketing Strategy

In our content marketing survey, only 38% of participants said they evaluate their strategy as average. This is why the overall content marketing strategy is one of the key focuses this year.

Creating an Excellent Strategy

Only 9% of our respondents said they describe their content marketing strategy as “excellent.”

What makes a content marketing strategy excellent? There are several differences that separate an effective strategy from an average one:

Knowing your audience
Setting goals
Promoting content
Blog and content quality

Content marketing goes beyond creating engaging content. Marketers need to create an excellent strategy that produces results.

Measuring Organic Traffic

76% of our participants measure their content marketing success via organic traffic growth. Most of this traffic comes from search engine results, updating and repurposing content, video content and video search engine results, and tracking the customer’s journey.

Why should you focus on measuring organic traffic? Organic traffic comprises one of the biggest factors when developing leads and even acquiring new customers. Measuring organic traffic will also measure the success of your SEO efforts, such as the keywords you use.

Lead-Driven Content

75% of survey respondents are using content to generate more leads. Lead-driven content marketing provides a strategic approach to content creation and promotion. Content needs to be valuable, educating the reader and enticing them to take action.

In addition, brands should publish content consistently to generate more leads. This includes written and visual content.

However, creating lead-driven content is also a major challenge. 54% of our respondents say they struggle to create lead-driven content. There are many reasons why and some of them are out of your control.

For example, buyer preferences are constantly changing. Not all types of content are effective (we’ll explain more about this point later in the article). Not all readers become leads the first time they find your website.

For brands, it’s essential you track the leads you gain from content to discover what’s successful and what isn’t.

Smaller Content Marketing Team and Increased Outsourcing

Your content marketing strategy is only as successful as your team. But how should you go about creating a content team?

78% of our respondents say they experience more success hosting a smaller content marketing team (between one and three members) and outsourcing additional tasks. At 53%, writing is the most outsourced skill.

What should you look for in a content marketing professional? Our respondents desire these skills and experience:

Marketing
Social media
SEO
Research
Editing

Soft skills you should look for include:

Leadership
Ability to make deadlines
Excellent communication

Why are more brands outsourcing their content creation? Outsourcing is not only cost-effective but brands receive high-quality content that’s delivered on time. In addition, not all on-staff content marketers have time to consistently produce content.

As well as writing, our respondents say they frequently outsource graphic design, video design, and animation.

Does this mean you should only outsource your content marketing efforts? 60% of our respondents said they don’t outsource their content creation. In addition, in-house content creation is increasing. This survey states 32% of businesses say they create their own content and don't outsource.

Growing Budgets

62% of our respondents state they’re increasing their content marketing budgets. In 2019, the majority of companies spent $10,000 on content marketing. Now businesses will spend even more this year.

Take TV and film streaming giants Netflix as a perfect example. They plan on spending over $17 billion on content creation in 2020.

Creating Content

Every brand achieves content marketing success differently. Some types of content work well for some brands and not as well for others. But there are content creation trends all businesses should know in 2020.

Blog Writing Is the Most Popular Type of Content

Most brands create blog posts and also receive the most success from their blog posts. That’s what 86% of our respondents said. Producing blogs is the easiest way to increase brand awareness, educates your readers, and helps you connect with your customers.

In addition to blog writing, most brands produce emails, case studies, and success stories.

Visual Content

Even though 28% of our respondents create videos, video and visual content is in demand. 37% of our respondents say visual content is the most efficient content marketing tactic. Next to video content, marketers desire infographics.

90% of the information our brain transmits is visual and our brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster. This is why 40% of consumers respond better to visual content over written content.

How should brands go about making visual content? Most of our respondents have visual content professionals on staff. 30% of our respondents have an in-house designer and our respondents also mention they outsource video and graphic design.

Blog Length

Longer articles are still more successful than short-form content. Longer articles of over 3,000 words receive 4x more shares, 3x more traffic, and 3.5x more backlinks than shorter-form content.

The main reason behind long-form content success lies in SEO rankings. Google is able to crawl longer content easier, recognizing more keywords. Longer content is also more valuable to the reader and holds more information, which is why longer content receives more backlinks.

Longer Headlines

Longer headlines, consisting of over 14 words, perform better than blogs with shorter headlines. Blogs with longer headlines receive 2x more shares, 2x more traffic, and 5x more backlinks than blogs with shorter headlines.

However, optimizing your headlines for performance is more complex than marketers think. Google has specific standards for headline length — Google only displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag.

Marketers should also know how social media channels display headlines. While LinkedIn will display as much as the first 120 characters of a headline, Facebook will only display the first 40 characters.

Lists Still Dominate

Articles with list headlines receive 2x more social shares and 2x more traffic than other types of headlines.

List headlines are more specific than other headlines, such as “guide” and “everything you need to know.” Listicle headlines interest the reader more, informing them of what they will learn from the article.

H2 and H3 Tag Usage

36% of articles that use H2 and H3 tags receive more shares, traffic, and backlinks. H2 and H3 tags help break up the article. The modern web reader skims an article, so the use of tags helps readers find the exact area of the article they want to read.

Trending Topics

What if you host a blogging website and want to produce evergreen content? Certain topics are trending in 2020. Some of these blog topics include:

Strategy
Social media
SEO
Statistics
AI
Blogging
Content ideas
Tools
Visual content
Trends
Startup
E-commerce
Influencer marketing
Beauty
Travel
Sales
ROI
Job
Email marketing
Audience research

What if your business is in a specific niche? Start with questions. Search forums such as Reddit, Quora and find questions consumers are asking. Answer their question but also write a blog about the topic.

If you can’t find any consumer questions, create an industry FAQ and continue adding to the list when a customer asks a question.

More industries are also writing State of the Industry blogs. State of the Industry blogs looks at the current conditions of a niche. They detail the legislative, economic, and regulatory aspects of the industry.

State of the Industry blogs also includes a downloadable document with more insight. These are usually available for free.

Keywords

The highest-performing keywords related to content marketing include:

Content marketing strategy (6,600 searches)
Content marketing institute (5,400 searches)
Content marketing agency (3,600 searches)
Content marketing examples (3,600 searches)
Content marketing definition (2,900 searches)
Content marketing plan (2,900 searches)
Content marketing world (2,400 searches)
and more

All of these keywords have high monthly search volumes, making them effective to use in your content.

Is keyword research changing in 2020? You’re still finding keywords with high monthly traffic, keyword relevancy, and competition.

But the prevalence of voice search is changing keyword research. Instead of optimizing your content for a general keyword (i.e. "SEO"), find phrases your consumers could be asking their AI (i.e. "how do I rank better in Google searches?").

Social Media

To amplify the success of your content, promote all content on your social media. 94% of responders say social media is the most effective content promotion platform.

Use these hashtags when you promote your content:

#digitalmarketing
#marketing
#seo
#socialmedia
#smm
#socialmediamarketing
#content
#onlinemarketing
#business
#growthhacking
#blogging
#startup
#bigdata
#ai
#influencermarketing
#emailmarketing
#infographic
#analytics
#machinelearning

It’s also important to use social media influencers in your social media marketing strategy. For example, the most prominent content marketing influencers are:

Mike Schiemer (@MikeSchiemer)
Evan Kirstel (@evankirstel)
Jeff Bullas (@jeffbulllas)
Larry Kim (@larrykim)
Ben Kamau (BenKamauDigital)
Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael)
Rebekah Raddice (@RebekahRaddice)
Isabella Jones (@IsabellaJonesCI)
Jonathan Aufray (@JonathanAufray)
Kirk Borne (@KirkDBorne)
Bryan Kramer (@bryankramer)
The Startup Nerd (@startup_nerd)
Nika Stewart (@NikaStewart)
Mike Quindazzi (@MikeQuindazzi)
Antonio Grasso (@antgrasso)
Marsha Collier (@MarshaCollier)
Chris Do (@TheChrisDo)
Kevin Lim (@_KevinLim)
Franz Russo (@franzrusso)
John Abraham (@iamjohny94)

Twitter is especially vital to your content marketing efforts. 72% of Tweets are more successful when they include links. Images dominate visual content — 50% of Tweets utilize images. However, 32% of Tweets feature no visuals and are still successful.

Key Takeaways

To sum up the state of content marketing in 2020, here are the key takeaways of the article:

Content marketing strategy. More marketers are focused on perfecting their strategy. One of the ways they will do this is by measuring their content’s organic traffic and lead generation.

Brands should also increase their content marketing budgets, building a strong in-house team and outsourcing content creation.

Content creation. Blogs still dominate as the most popular type of content created. But visual content is becoming more widely used. It’s more important than ever for brands to ensure they write long-form content separated with tags and that feature effective headers.

Social media. Social media promotion is the most effective form of blog promotion. To amplify your promotional efforts, use high-performing hashtags and seek help from influencers. When using Twitter, Tweets with links and images are the most popular.