Blink and you’ll miss it but 2018 is halfway over which means it’ll be 2020 before we know it.
So, what is the future of marketing your business, what is the new media to watch and how can you implement this into your marketing strategy to get ahead of your competition?
The Internet and Social Media are constantly changing and adapting. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Youtube fight for our attention and actively update their platforms to ensure we stay on their platforms for as long as possible. Dramatically, this year we’ve seen the release of huge algorithm changes to Facebook in January, which prioritised content from family and friends over organic business content and the most recent Instagram algorithm unveiling last week and these are going to shape the way we market our businesses online moving forward.
A change we`re seeing currently is that people are spending less time reading and watching videos and more time listening. And as thought-leader and practitioner Gary Vaynerchuck has been saying for a while now, in the next decade voice technology is going to revolutionise the way we behave on a day to day basis. We’ll be asking Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa and other AI voice platforms to answer our questions, make our appointments, buy our groceries and wish our friends happy birthday for us - a serious step up from telling it to play music, which is how most of us use our Google Home currently.
This means we need to be creating audio content for our business to distribute and putting it in front of our audiences in an accessible way that integrates into their daily lives and how they interact with their devices.
Podcasts
The humble podcast has made a resurgence and it’s bigger than ever before, and business podcasts are thriving at the forefront. With the intention of the medium being to deliver information, value and spark ideas it has lent itself perfectly to thought-leaders, business owners, marketers and experts who are loving the opportunity to talk openly about their passion for, sometimes, up to two hours. The value in producing podcasts around your content is that they can be so easily integrated into the users day, it takes very little for someone to simply listen to your podcast as he or she goes about their day working, driving, running or exercising. Explore podcasts on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
Voice Friendly Content
The world is about to start searching the internet through asking questions rather than typing keywords, Google’s algorithm is working hard to build up the capability to answer these questions properly but put your business ahead by serving it up on a platter. Look into using longer, more voice-friendly keywords in your titles and making sure your digital assets are honed to provide the best answers to these basic and easy-win voice requests first.
Siri Shortcuts, Alexa Skills and Google Actions
Millions of smart devices around the world are now AI capable and they are all oriented around voice commands; the next step is integrating your business or service into how your user’s purchase, consume and interact with your business through this technology. For some businesses, this will consist of setting up shortcuts, skills and actions that allow users to interact with their apps without opening them, like making appointments or ordering morning coffee when they wake up or leave the house. For other businesses, this could be creating 365 quick content snippets, facts or tips that will be read to the user at random each morning as part of their morning routine sequences that they set up. Look into how you can use Siri Shortcuts, Alexa Skills and Google Actions to connect with your users.
Bonus Tip: Youtube, Facebook and Instagram Videos
Although not strictly voice, when the way that users are using their devices and platforms is so diverse, it’s crucial to reduce friction between your ideal user and them consuming your content. That means that is Jane loves listening to podcasts as she drives to work but John loves to sneak in a Youtube video on his lunch break you need to be delivering to them both, guess what? There is a way to put your content in front of them both of them and shoot about 6 birds with one stone. Ready? When putting together your content, think of the distribution channels that it could possibly have before even filming or recording. My recommendation: Get your topic and rather than recording a podcast, record a video you can even go live on Facebook Live, Instagram Story Live or Youtube Live to do this. Save the video when you’re done, upload it in video format (Long form on Youtube, 1-3 minute shorts on Facebook and Instagram, 15 second snippets on Instagram Stories) then upload the audio as a podcast and transcribe it into written form as a blog post. In just one recording you have content that is reaching your audience in whichever format they like to consume their content, you’ve got a multitude of raw content that can be distributed in different ways going forward and you’re one step closer to providing the key piece of value that pushes your dream client over the line and makes them a customer.
The way that our users are interacting in the digital landscape is changing and the way we distribute content and information to them needs to match this.
Image Source: @emmakateco
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