Lauren Fox

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Hey, everyone!

Phew, we just finished tweeting up a storm for our first ever #BraftonBuzz #TwitterChat and I have to say, things went swimmingly.

Our hands might have cramped during the action-packed hour of rapid tweeting, but it was well worth it, and content marketers delivered great discussions on the topics we posed, which, if you’re just tuning in today, were centered around the Future of Content Marketing.

via GIPHY

Here’s a recap of some of the best insights from the chat:

Question 1: What are some of the biggest content marketing FAILS from back in the day?

Answer 1: So many facepalm moments…

Keyword stuffing content. Keyword stuffing was a widely used tactic back in the day, and unfortunately, our group of Twitter respondents was still able to call up plenty of examples on the internet the day of the chat. Please, don’t do it. You’re not fooling Google, and you’re sending your readers running for the hills!

Producing content that doesn’t provide value to your readers. Examples: It’s too short to properly cover a topic (under 200 words) or it’s overly promotional and about only your company’s products/services. Find your readers’ questions and pain points and speak to those in your content. This is not a should do, it’s a must do.

Designing content just for desktop users. Example: 5,000 words of itty bitty text. No one’s going to read that! Content needs to be easily consumable, even when your readers are on-the-go with their mobile devices. Think: large text broken into digestible chunks with lots of custom imagery.

Forgetting to be personable on social. Automatically direct-messaging new followers is a huge turn-off.

Using a tragedy to enhance your product or promote brand awareness. Enough said.

Question 2: What do you think content marketing will look like 5 years from now?

Answer 2: Here’s what content marketers saw in their crystal ball…

The robots are coming. No, but really. Predictions ranged from bots taking over completely to being able to use AI to more effectively A/B test different types of content for rankability. The group foresaw plenty of video and augmented reality to go around and content marketing through VR as the new norm.

With plenty of access to all forms of multimedia, content will become even more immersive, personalized, in-the-moment and fed to us in a constant stream.

The walls between brand and consumer will dissipate, and there’ll be more opportunity for positive, organic connections. We’ll have more information at our fingertips than we know what to do with.

Influencer marketing will be huge. If you’re like me, you deal with decision paralysis and are tempted to over-research even the tiniest of decisions, like which type of car-phone holder to purchase. It was predicted that influencers will be the shining light to guide consumers to the brands they should know and trust.

Question 3: What would you change about your content marketing strategy today?

Answer 3: This is what content marketers from the chat are striving for.

Efficiency. Marketers throughout the industry want to execute their content marketing strategies as effectively as possible, and see time being a major hurdle. They want to accomplish more with the increasingly fleeting moments of their day-to-day.

Consistency. Across the board, publishing content consistently is one of content marketers’ key goals. It’s hard to keep up, but the bar has been set and it’s not going anywhere any time soon.

Content masters. Content marketers from the chat said they want to harness the power of great content that can be repurposed more effectively and create evergreen content that can appeal to a variety of audiences. They want to solve two problems and answer three questions all in one piece.

Question 4: Is content marketing a fad or a long-term solution?

Answer 4: Long-term FTW.

Content marketing will continue to be a long-term strategy as long as…

  • …we continue to adapt to what their audience wants.
  • …,pending the invention of telepathy, we use words to communicate.
  • …social media lives on and we use it to market our personal and professional brands.
  • …we continue to strive for better content.
  • …rock and roll is a popular genre of music.

Question 5: Is volume over topic relevance ever the right strategy?

Answer 5: Topic relevance beats volume any day of the week.

This was pretty unanimous across the board. Volume is never the right strategy at the cost of relevance. With too much off-target content, you run the risk of creating reader fatigue. Marketers need to adopt a 100 percent reader-first mentality in their content marketing strategies. That means highlighting only the most relevant and valuable content and thoroughly covering a topic to provide the best information for our readers. Create and curate value.

Plus, Google no longer rewards you for publishing tons of content.

Question 6: Are you worried about AI taking your job?

Answer 6: Hold onto your bots, folks.

Jokes aside, we discussed the need to embrace the fact that automation, AI and robots are here to stay and will be more present in our future lives. They may even take over some of the more repetitive, manual jobs that content marketers currently handle. We will likely interface with bots on a daily basis.

But creativity can’t be automated… yet (okay! I’ll stop now). And imagination is something AI will never master.

As our jobs go the way of the automated, streamlined and mechanical, the human essence we imbue into our personal and professional brands will be at a premium. That’s what makes us unique and that’s what will continue to set us apart from the crowd.

And that’s all we have for you today, folks! I hope you’ll join us for our next chat on Wednesday, October 25th at 2pm Eastern.