The Future of Content Marketing in 2024 (Trends You Can't Ignore)

Organic content marketing is how I was able to grow my business to six figures and ultimately get to a half a million dollar business. But new platforms pop up, new strategies come into play. So what is going to trend in content marketing in 2024? That's what I'm going to share with you in this video. My name is Trea. If you're brand new to my channel and I help course creators and coaches use YouTube to organically drive new leads and sales to their business. And as I mentioned, my entire business was built on content marketing. So what is the first thing we should look at for a trend in 2024 when it comes to content marketing? I'm sure this comes as no surprise at all, but AI in fact, HubSpot's State of Marketing report found that 64% of marketers are already using AI. And back in October I was at VidSummit and there was a lot of talk about using AI with your YouTube process and strategy as well as in your business. In a recent blog over on HubSpot actually quotes Sean Downey, Google's President, Americas and Global Partners, saying, now here's where we flip the script. Despite all the exciting things AI can do, it can't work on its own. It takes people with expertise, creativity and empathy to harness AI's potential. It isn't above the technology itself, it's about what you as marketers will do with it. AI. AI can't do anything without you, but you can do so much more with AI. So the good news is AI is not going to take over our job, but we can use it strategically in a way to help us do our job better as marketers and business owners. And I'm going to tell you, if you aren't using AI right now in your business, it is definitely a trend you need to consider in 2024 because 40% of marketers report that AI is already helping them create content. And while AI sounds like this amazing solution and this magic way to get things done, it's not yet. In fact, Christy Marble, 3x CMO at Pantheon says, but the traps businesses fall into is they get a little lazy and just take what AI spits out and doesn't put their sprinkle into it. And I'm going to tell you this is so true because I use a lot of AI, I will use chat, GPT and there are so many times that I will get back title ideas or blog titles with the following words and when I see them on social or on a blog post or on a YouTube title. I know they have used AI and they've not put their sprinkle on it words like unlock hidden potential ultimate. I know those words were typically pulled straight out of what AI spit out for that person. So as we are looking for these trends in AI for 2024, it is very important for you to understand right now. You've got to learn AI responsibly. AI can help you transform and make your messaging better, but you've got to put the prompts in, you've got to set up the frameworks on how you're going to use AI to get the best results. And then you got to take those results and put your specialty, your sprinkle onto that to make a connection with your audience. Because anybody who's using AI can get the exact same words and phrases as you. But to make you stand out, you've got to put your uniqueness in it and not just take it as it is and throw it up on your content. Let me show you in Chat GTP how I have created basically my own avatar and built this out. So when I ask it a question, I can really get specific answers based on what my target audience would want. When you go into ChatGPT, you want to create a chat and you are going to plug in as much information as you know about your audience. And so you can see right here, I started training it that I offer a coaching program for online courses and business coaches, and I share what I teach them. And then I asked it to tell me the biggest pain points these people are having. From there, I said, knowing these pain points, you know, what could I include in language or promotional materials for email copy and so forth. And so I just keep feeding it more information and I keep this chat going. You see, I have it saved right here. So the more information that I provide it, the more it's going to learn about my person. So if we go the whole way down here to the bottom, and yes, this is how much I've been feeding it and how much it's helped me create. What would the five days of this challenge look like? Again, just giving in as much information about my person as possible. Now, let me go down to the bottom and show you what this looks like. So I may say knowing everything you know about my ideal audience is the next best video series for YouTube that I should create that would attract new people to my channel. All right, and then we let it do its thing here. Now we're seeing this is a pretty solid series that I could do and it is based around some of the research that I've already done in my profitable keyword framework. But not only does it give me the ideas, it tells me what to discuss, what I should share in it, then it gives me the series objectives and then it gives me the marketing strategies. So let's look at it at a different perspective now. Okay, so again, knowing what you know about my audience, they really want to better understand their business metrics and how to make better decisions in their business based on data. What would be a great lead magnet to attract this type of business owner to my email list? So honestly, I am surprised by how great these lead magnets ideas. Not only did it give me an ebook and it gave me an interactive workbook, a video course idea, a dashboard template idea, a webinar idea, an email course, a checklist, a case study tool recommendation, and a data analysis session giveaway. And so it's able to give me more specific ideas because of all the information it's accumulated over the time. And like I said, I'm just providing more information in this ChatGPT specific chat. There is one more thing I want to talk about around AI when we start to look at content marketing Trends here in 2024 and it's that search engines like Google and Bing are currently using AI to dominate search results. Meaning all that SEO you've been doing on your website and your blogs could ultimately fall behind Google and Bing's auto populated search results. Basically. In fact, Google's SGE rollout in 2024 will cause momental changes to content marketing and SEO and coming from a specific article over on HubSpot. And so if we know Google and Bing are going to be using AI to basically outrank us on Google, what can we do when it comes to our content marketing plan in 2024 to beat them out? First of all, you've got to really lean into personality driven content. You want to focus on first person narrative and long tail queries. So something that's not so easily answered by AI. What are those longer questions that you're getting by your target audience audience that only you could really answer for them? You also want to start thinking about in your content marketing plan how to share your specific perspective, what's your opinion, make a stance when it comes to your niche and what you believe in in your niche? And I know this can be a little bit scary because you're like, well I want everybody to like me. The problem is when you try to be something for everyone, you end up being no 1 for everyone. And for you to really stand out when it comes to AI in 2024, you have got to make a stance and you have got to who you are and who you are not for. And I will say there will be one other way to outrank the AI robots over on Google and Bing and that is guess what? YouTube content. The thing is, AI cannot generate a YouTube video as engaging or as, let's say, sit through worthy enough as a human as you. As you provide your personal opinions, you share your way of explaining things, you give your own vibes in a video. By creating YouTube videos and building a community on YouTube, this is how you will have an opportunity, how you can stand out against AI here in 2024. Because I can only really create those auto populated voice videos with B roll and maybe photos. But people want to connect with a human. People want to feel like they know you. People want that sense of community and by you being on YouTube in 2024 that that gives you a leg up on any kind of AI out there that is trying to beat you in SEO. All right, I think that is enough on AI for right now. Let's jump into another trend I'm seeing in content marketing for 2024 and you will be surprised by this one. Podcasting. Yes, I said it. I said podcasting. Now I want to add some caveats here for podcasting, but overall I do believe that we are going to see a rise in podcasting. And you may think, Trina, everybody and their brother already has a podcast. I do have some thoughts on what we can tend to see when it comes to podcasting in 2024. So typically up to this point, the biggest problem with podcasting is searchability. Now platforms like Spotify and Apple's podcast platform really kind of make it hard to search for new podcasts or if you start a new podcast, how you can really be found. You kind of need to do those show notes and make sure they're really optimized for SEO to show up in Google. But we just talked about how AI may be starting to outrank us. But what we seeing in 2024 is a possibility of searchability when it comes to podcasting and that is YouTube. YouTube has been dabbling with podcasting. We've heard about it all through 2023 and this podcasting platform that YouTube has been working on and they're really working to compete in this space as well. And if they can make it happen, this is really going to be significant for podcasts because YouTube is a search engine and we would be able to get our podcasts more searchable on a search engine as opposed to the platforms like Spotify and Apple iPad and Apple iPad and Apple and Apple podcasts. Now, does this mean I'm jumping to podcasting tomorrow? No. But I am going to actively be keeping an eye on what is going on in the podcast platform here, specifically on YouTube. I probably would not start a podcast specifically on this channel, my main channel. I would probably start a separate channel specifically specific to that podcast so that all of my content on that channel would be podcast related content. Whereas my podcasting channel, I would think of it more as my content specific for podcasting. And I could take that audio and pull it off and you put it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. But I want my audience to understand this channel here is for my videos from me to you. And that channel would be specific for podcasting content, but it is not on my plan for 2024 yet. I am keeping an eye on it and maybe I will check in, reevaluate it in the late spring, maybe early summer to see how things are going and what I'm hearing from industry friends in the podcasting space on YouTube. Now what I'm looking at when it comes to Podcasting trending in 2024 actually leads into the next content marketing trend I want to talk about, and that is short form vertical video. And you're probably like, well duh, Trina, vertical video has been here for 2023 as well. But I've opinions when it comes to vertical video because guess what, I want to lay out my opinions and my stance because I don't want to be confused with an AI robot. I think before you start to implement any of these trends, you know, using AI or using podcasting or even short form video content is going to be critical for you to truly understand what your audience likes to consume and how they like to consume content. Just because these are marketing trends does not mean these trends will work for your audience. This is why in my coaching program, one of the first exercises I have every single client go through is getting clarity on who your audience is and what will be the best way to grow that audience. So if we truly understand them and how they consume content, we can then specifically pick the platforms, the medium of content marketing that we are going to do to get the best results. It could be YouTube, it could be Instagram, it could be LinkedIn. But you need to know who your person is, how they consume content specifically on that platform, and what they truly believe that their problem is. So you can formulate your content marketing plan around these answers. Now if you are interested in working with me as a coaching client, I also help you dig into specifically to your business metrics so that you can make confident data based decisions and you're not just making decisions based on how you're feeling or what you think might work. I also help clients specifically build YouTube strategies as well. So if you're thinking about being focused here on YouTube and building a community on YouTube, I help my clients do that. And we only have a few spots open in this program every single month because this is such a high touch program. We have our community based inside of Slack which you get direct message access to me. You also get hot seats with me and we have weekly coaching calls as well. So you can go to trina little.com forward/apply to learn more. Submit your application and we will be in contact within 48 hours of you submitting that application. All right, back to Vertical Video Podcasting. Vertical videos are popping up Everywhere, whether it's TikTok, whether it's Instagram, whether it is YouTube shorts, and it's a pretty big content marketing trend for 2024. But do you know if your audience watches this type of content? Because I personally know I don't consume these short form clips from podcasts and I know that my audience doesn't either. So would it make sense for me to pull clips from my YouTube videos and do these podcast style vertical videos or even spend time doing a podcast and pulling these vertical videos out because my audience isn't attracted to that type of content? I know specifically that my audience is watching Instagram reels, specifically more of B roll type content with about 6 to 10 seconds worth of content and they are seeing trending audios. This is how they are consuming content on Instagram. And then I know in the captions if I write like a micro blog full of valuable information that is what's going to get in front of my target audience the best. Now I also being a consumer of TikTok, know that people over on TikTok right now are wanting more raw in longer form, more of like the three minute mark. And so just by splicing up a podcast and throwing text on it and turning your podcast into short form videos will not work to grow your audience or connect with your audience on TikTok. So that's why I talked about earlier. You have to truly understand who your audience is and how they are consuming content. Otherwise you're going to be putting content up that doesn't make that connection and it's not going to do anything for you when it comes to growing your audience. So while I think short form video content is still gonna be a major content marketing trend for 2024, you need to analyze what is going to work best for you and what your particular audience is consuming. You can't just take what some marketing guru says as a blanket statement as true. You've got to really understand how your audience is consuming vertical video. So while I talked about repurposing, you know, YouTube videos or podcast clips into short form content and why this may or may not work, it leads me into my next content marketing trend for 2024, and that is Omni marketing or basically being on all the platforms at once. Again, I've got strong opinions on this. In fact, my opinions on being on all the platforms has changed drastically in the last couple of years. In fact, a few years ago, you may have even bought a course for me called the Video Multiplier Formula. And I showed you exactly how to multiply your one YouTube video into 20 plus pieces of content. And I talked about how important it was to be on all these platforms. Guess what? I had changed my mind. And I personally believe it is impossible, especially if you are a team of one or you have one other person to be on every single platform and get results. Let me dive into that a minute. Repurposing content takes a lot of work. Even if you're using an AI software like Get Munch, where you plug in your content and it will automatically splice it up into, into the best clips, you have still got to upload those clips to those platforms like LinkedIn or Pinterest or TikTok or Instagram and you have to be active on those platforms. You can't just post and ghost. If you want to grow an audience and you want to get sales from these platforms, you have to be active on these platforms. So if you're just creating content for all of these platforms and you're just posting them and you just have enough energy to get everything posted, you're not going to see the results from repurposing because you have to actually engage, you have to actually communicate with your audience. Because these are social platforms, we need to be social. And if you aren't taking time to respond to comments and you aren't taking time to respond to those messages, which I'm going to tell you is a lot of work, in addition to splicing up all this content is going to be pointless for you to be on these platforms if you can't engage on these platforms. And as somebody who has personally been on that content creation, hamster wheel and I currently at the moment have three full time employees and a video editor, I cannot personally keep up with more than two social platforms because if I do any more it is definitely going to affect my mental well being and I'm going to be exhausted. So I personally believe you should be on one long form evergreen platform, YouTube. Maybe it's podcasting, maybe it's blogging, but I like to have one of these platforms as a key content hub for myself so that I know this content will continue working for me for years honestly to come. And then I like to choose a nurture platform for me. That's Instagram. I like having to play around with reels when I have the time. Now if I'm on all these other platforms and I'm trying to do reels as well, I start to hate content marketing. But because I'm just focused on YouTube as long form evergreen content and then I'm using my reels to nurture my audience, to com to engage with them, do DMs, reply to messages, that is what I realistically can handle and that is how I'm getting the best results because I'm taking the time to engage and connect with my community on these platforms. And it's not just a content quantity game. The other thing you have to think about when it comes to repurposing your content is people are on different platforms to experience different types of content. Like I Talked about earlier, TikTok, people want more raw storytelling type content on TikTok. What you do on TikTok is not going to translate well over to Instagram because Instagram reels is a very different experience. And what you do on Instagram reels is not going to translate to YouTube and what you do on YouTube is not going to translate to podcasting. So just because you do one piece of content does not mean that piece of content spliced up everywhere else is even going to work well for you. So like I said, focus on one to two platforms and create content specific for what works well on those platforms and what your audience is consuming on those platforms. That is how you're going to see the best results when it comes to your content marketing in 2024. When it comes to this omni platform platform trend, don't buy into it. If you cannot be on multiple platforms at once, you can still 100% be successful. The next content marketing trend I wanna talk about, I think may be the most important for all of us in 2024. And it is email marketing. Email marketing is going to continue to remain supreme as we go into 2024. We are seeing longer buying cycles when it comes to online business like courses and coaching. And so being able to get people, people on your email list and continue nurturing them and providing them value and giving them a sense of who you are as a person is what's going to be important for you. To convert people in 2024, they've got to have plenty of time on your email list to feel they can trust you, feel like you are going to be the right person for them and really have that know, like trust factor in you. Now I will say something that I think you should focus on in 2024 when it comes to your email list is segmenting and having very niche content for specific people. So for example, when they come into your list, maybe sending them an email that says which problem are you having right now? And you have three options and they click on an option and maybe they're taken to a blog, but when they click on that blog, they are tagged as having problem number two. And then you follow that up with a few emails very specific to their problem. That's going to feel like you understand them, you see them, you actually care about that problem. When you can get very specific with your email marketing for them. You also want to be creating your emails like you're writing to a friend. Now somebody that I think that does email marketing off the chart, which is my crush when it comes to email marketing, is Ashlyn writes, I love the way she does her emails. They're very personal. You feel like she is writing to a friend and giving you like an update on her personal life. But as we continue to talk about AI like we did earlier, you can't just plug some generic email every single week to your list. You've got to make it personal so they don't feel like it's just another AI generated list. This person doesn't care about me. You've got to add more personality to it and more stories. Now this is just the kickoff of a series I'm starting here on my channel to help you get better results with your content marketing. In the next video, I'm going to share with you my best tips and strategies for how to create more engaging content so when you do post your content, you don't get crickets. Watch that video now and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it.