Content strategy for the future

Attree

The main gap for publishers in today’s fast-paced business environment lies in the opportunity to work with brands by collaborating and co-creating content. Doing so really brings creativity together and is a ‘best of both’ situation. If you’ve not yet seen them, have a look at Vogue’s branded videos for an example of how to develop new content that stands out from the rest and captures consumers’ attention as they offer something different and don’t merely punt the Vogue brand.

Publishers are also missing an opportunity when it comes to repurposing or remixing content, making it new again by not just shortening the original content, but by also adding something relevant and engaging like short video footage or turning images into a SlideShare gallery. This makes your overall content offering more accessible, as not every online reader actually wants to read through a 500-word article. You need to think of different ways to present the same content.

Key to this is the fact that mobile is increasingly becoming the device of choice for reading – if your platform design is not responsive to different screen sizes, you run the risk of annoying your audience. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be cut down to the bare basics (there’s actually been a surge of long-format reading on mobiles), but keep it interesting. Embed video where you can and remember that the purpose of your end-product is always either to educate or entertain – if it doesn’t do either, you’re actually wasting your time creating content that doesn’t resonate with your audience.

Same reader, different media platform

Also remember that your truly loyal reader is likely reading your article on the web as well as your tweets and Facebook statuses, so you need to change things up and present the content differently across those platforms, too. And social media is no longer limited to your personal life, with many people today choosing to use their downtime to further educate or distract themselves by listening to podcasts and following the latest breaking news and trends in order to better their business. We’ve done this to ourselves unfortunately, feeling anxious and disconnected if we don’t constantly scroll through the latest headlines and hashtags, checking our inboxes first thing in the morning and last thing at night to make sure we’re not missing anything.

Being mindful of what keeps consumers interested is as simple as stepping out of your ‘cubicle mindset’ and tapping into your own consumer personality. What interests you? What do you want to read more about? What format should content be in to keep you clicking through to the next linked article? It’s time to take a deep breath, step back from the analytics and graphs for a moment and regroup. Remember to ask yourself these questions as you develop your content strategy for now and the future.

Click here for more of Attree’s content marketing trends for 2016, here to find out what’s going on #BehindtheSelfie and be sure to follow Ogilvy’s Twitter feed and press office for their latest news.