5 Trends Shaping the Future of Content Marketing
Content marketing is changing. The old playbook has been thrown out the window, giving brands new opportunities to reshape the medium.
Brands are experimenting with new formats, approaches, and content styles to form deeper emotional connections and build immersive brand worlds for their audiences. Instead of purely informational, content is leaning toward aspirational, entertaining, and inspirational, giving brands a vehicle to demonstrate taste, perspective, and storytelling.
From hyperniching to slow content, here are five trends shaping the future of content marketing.
The niches are in the riches
As AI becomes more prevalent, brands and creators risk getting lost in the noise with broad, surface-level content. This content is generic and often lacks an original perspective or take.
However, brands and creators can give themselves an edge by developing deep, nuanced expertise on a single topic. But it isn’t just about choosing an industry or topic to go deep on; it’s also about developing a specific perspective and point of view.
The brands that are having the most success with their content are those that focus on solving one specific problem for one specific customer with one specific perspective.
Otherwise known as hyperniching.
This combination of deep expertise and specific perspectives quickly establishes brands and creators as experts, enabling them to be category leaders and own a perspective by creating a lane for themselves.
From a brand perspective, niche groups have huge buying power. Brands are discovering that when they solve a small problem or create a unique experience for a specific group, they have a huge advantage in the market.
As social media feeds become more recommendation-focused, hyper-niched content helps you reach more of the right people.
Hyper-niched content not only creates new trends but also sets the foundation for new subcultures and communities to emerge. Consumers can subscribe to content and join communities that reflect their interests and values, no matter how specific they are.
Brands can communicate to their audience that they see them as more than just a number, creating a space for people to come together through a common interest. When you speak to a specific person about a specific problem from a specific point of view, your audience can see themselves in your content.
It resonates with them a lot more, and they find more value in it and keep your brand top of mind. This not only fast-tracks trust building but also helps you grow an engaged audience of fans.
The new entertainment studios
Leading insight and analytics firm Nielsen recently announced that YouTube has surpassed traditional cable and streaming services as the most watched platform.
This tells us that consumers are turning to different platforms and sources for their content and entertainment. And brands are starting to take note.
Brands are starting to lean into creating branded entertainment content for the sole purpose of entertaining their audiences.
This type of content focuses on storytelling and experiences, not selling products. It’s designed to give a specific vibe and evoke what the brand is about.
Brands like Tower 28 and Brooklyn Coffee Shop are creating highly-produced episodic content to share on social media. This type of content consists of longer, scripted sketch videos that lean heavily into storytelling.
These videos are uploaded in a more film-like cinematographic style rather than a 9:16 vertical ratio, helping them stand out on the feed.
They read as short advertisements, cleverly highlighting the brand’s products and values. This type of content doesn’t feel like marketing because the product is portrayed as a character in the story, not the subject.
Brands that are leaning into creating more entertaining content are seeing the risk pay off massively. They’ve seen massive follower growth and engagement on any branded content they create.
Why? Because consumers are moved by stories.
Brands realize that they don’t have to constantly push their products in their marketing, but rather build a story around them to create an aspirational lifestyle.
Audiences resonate with this type of storytelling because they can picture themselves in the brand’s content, living the kind of lifestyle that the brand portrays.
From educational to aspirational
For the last decade, content marketing has primarily leaned toward education, with brands taking an SEO-first approach to their content.
With Google providing the direction and brands like Hubspot writing the playbook, we entered an SEO-driven content arms race, with how-to guides and listicles dominating the internet.
Brands of all sizes rushed to produce SEO content to gain domain authority, competing to land a top-ranking spot on Google’s search engine results page.
But as more brands try to rank for the same keywords and AI-generated content dilutes expertise, SEO content has lost its value.
As a result, we’re seeing brands shift how they approach their content. Instead of focusing solely on educational content, they’re creating aspirational content.
Brands are treating their content like a mood board, conveying a certain vibe, lifestyle, and energy.
They are taking more creative liberties with the types of content they create, from expert-driven editorial content to entertaining branded content.
An aspirational approach allows brands to infuse content with more storytelling and perspective than traditional SEO-driven educational content.
This helps brands create a niche, helping them stand out from others in their industry.
They can better demonstrate expertise, cleverly showcase their products, and create a better brand experience for their audiences.
The future is in the founder
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a massive shift in how brands use social media.
Buyers no longer resonate with faceless, impersonal, and buttoned-up professional marketing. They want to build connections and relationships with the brands they buy from.
And they want to know the person behind the brands they buy from.
Instead of leading with their company account, many brands, especially in the startup space, are turning to their founders’ social media accounts.
In the past, major product updates or announcements would come from the company account, but they now come from the founder and are amplified by the company account.
Founder-led content takes personalization to a whole new level, allowing brands to put a face to the brand.
Instead of just associating the brand with the name, founder-led content associates the brand name with the founder. And instead of the company account acting as a middleman, founder-led content allows people to get information directly from the source.
Founders can share their POV, build in public, and provide first-hand industry insight. This allows them to build trust with their audience by being the face of their company.
Founder-led marketing not only positions founders to be thought leaders in their industry, but also to build a personal brand alongside their company’s
We’re seeing founders not only build massive social media followings but also build out long-form owned content channels like newsletters. These content channels allow founders to share exclusive, behind-the-scenes insights for building their company. Some are even using their products to do so.
Founder-led marketing indirectly markets the company, driving people to book a demo, purchase the product, or be a part of their brand world.
From mindless to mindful content consumption
We’ve reached the end of brain rot and mindless content consumption.
In 2023, Gartner predicted that 50% of social media users would abandon or significantly reduce their social media usage. And recently, Deloitte reported that nearly one in five users paused or deleted a social account in the past year, up from 15%.
With more content than ever on our feeds, and more of it generated by AI, we’re becoming more selective about what we consume.
That said, we’re seeing a trend towards mindful consumption in a movement known as slow content.
Like slow food and the makers movement, slow content focuses on creating better-quality content rather than creating more content.
Some of the slow content movement principles are quality versus quantity, depth versus breadth, creativity versus fashion, and enrichment over transaction, among others.
The movement's goal is to reclaim the web and make it a better place with content that serves a purpose rather than just acts as noise.
As a result, we’re seeing an increase in the production of long-form content like newsletters, podcasts, and blogs. Not because they are trendy, but because they give consumers a break from social media.
These types of content allow creators and business owners to produce higher-quality content, offer more insight, and build a platform. The idea is to create communities around content people actively seek out rather than stumble across in the feed.
Content marketers and brands can make this shift by focusing on creating content that serves their audience rather than search engines and AI. They can leverage customer insights, opinions, and perspectives to create private content channels and communities and invite their audience to participate.
The result is innovative, high-quality content that shares new ideas, inspiration, and expertise, positioning the brand as a tastemaker.
What’s next for content marketing?
We’re at an exciting crossroads with content marketing. It’ll be interesting to see what patterns emerge and which brands lead the development of a new content playbook. But for now, it’s the Wild West, and anything goes.
