In the rapidly changing field of content marketing, it’s important to stay on top of the small permutations in the marketplace that can be the harbingers of larger shifts to come. Take a look at the most recent studies from 2017 that provide a fascinating window on what’s happening in content marketing right up to this minute.
Facebook Still Rules Social Media
Especially for news sites, Facebook is the place to be. According to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism July 2017 study, Facebook holds a 70 percent share in the social media space, with fully 47 percent of news consumers using it. Facebook’s messaging apps continue to grow as well. If you’re a content marketer, this means that even if Facebook isn’t an ideal marketing choice for your product, you must have a presence there.
Take a look at the 2017 Digital News Report to learn how human editors are holding up against algorithms, plus surprising new facts about news consumption.
Google Controls Traffic
Google picks up more than 16 percent of all the traffic on the web. Following behind at some distance are Facebook, YouTube (owned by Google), Yahoo and Amazon. Of note for content marketers: the vast majority of U.S. online users are spending significant time on Google and Facebook, both with user rates hovering over two-thirds of the online population.
This study from digital marketing consultant Alexandar Tachalova and SimilarWeb also reports on market share across U.S. industries, showing that Amazon and eBay control almost 75 percent of all online marketing, and it touches on specific industries such as gambling and travel.
Related: 3 Powerful Content Marketing Metrics You Have to Be Monitoring
Get Emotional!
A fascinating study by BuzzSumo published in June 2017 shows that headlines that provoke an emotional reaction get the greatest clickthrough response. Whether the headline promises to “make you cry” or “melt your heart” with “tears of joy,” tugging at the reader’s emotion is consistently effective. The most effective headline phrase was “will make you,” which promises an emotional response from the article. How effective was it? It resulted in double the engagement numbers of any other phrase.
Check the study out to see which phrases and even numbers pop for readers in headlines, drawing on analysis of more than 100 million online headlines.
The Top Content Marketers and What They Have in Common
The Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 annual report on B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America compared content marketers at all levels to see what they had in common. The most successful content marketers show a strong commitment to content marketing and have a realistic understanding of what this type of marketing can achieve. In addition, they measure the ROI on their content marketing constantly, and they stay nimble, adjusting their content marketing strategy quickly when needed.
This important study also dives deep into content marketing strategy as well as team organization, content creation and goals and metrics for online content marketing.
The Essential Content Marketing Issues for 2017
The 2017 Incite Marketing Report hones in on the key issues driving marketers in the current environment. Most important? Personalization and understanding customers. Brand storytelling is also a huge issue for content marketers, growing significantly over previous years in importance, especially for marketing technology firms. Almost half of all marketers feel it’s important to build immersive customer experiences, and the importance of social media for customer engagement had the greatest year-over-year increase in importance of all issues studied, with marketing tech experts again keying in on it.
The study’s focus on how to market effectively to customers who are tired of being marketed to makes it a must-read for all content marketers. Key areas covered in the report include personalization, marketing attribution, and storytelling as content.
Check out all these research studies to see how your own content marketing may need to adapt to today’s changing marketplaces.
