The future of content (my predictions)

Alright I’m going out on a limb here Gary Vee style are you ready for it?

I’ve been thinking about the future of content a lot lately and how the trends have evolved.

So let’s take a brief step back to when I entered the marketing scene, where I’m at now and where I think things are going.

When I entered the content era it wasn’t even called content yet.

It wasn’t anything.

As a PR firm we had more services than stand alone “we’ll get ya on the news”

We were building clients websites, and that was a big deal-

In 2008, all everyone wanted to talk about was getting a website.
We did that, with the help of my super techy smart brother whom hadn’t even graduated high school yet, Real News PR was offering web services!

Why?

Because our clients needed a way to display their media appearances with something we called a “press page” and mic drop, that was a new term ok? Press page.

The average PR client had press releases sent, they used email, but in no way did businesses have social media yet.

They had flyers, brochures, print collateral. Video became a thing, and we would do company “About You” videos introducing our clients to the world through video.

This was sufficient from 2008-2010.

Social media took center stage in 2011 but it wasn’t necessary yet.

We had Facebook and Twitter.

Clients would be concerned with what in the world would be posted on pages- in which they obsessed over every national holiday to make a post and every happy customer review to boast.

We would scour the Internet to find interesting articles to share but rarely would the client want to write their own content article.

My role in the company was booking our clients to speak and I was able to get program directors attention with our client’s fancy press pages because again, it was a fairly new concept for any small business to have one.

My life became dedicated to getting client’s speeches captured on video to show a program director just how amazing a speaker we had. This was a very long process to get a full glamorous speaker video shot and edited together. Picture multiple speeches, variety of audiences, long hours of edits and client revisions etc. ok I know I’m going way into detail land of the way back when but I promise I’m getting to today.

I became obsessed with online quality control. Did the website look good and was the press page updated? Does the video play on the website or does a broken link show up because something broke on the website.
Let’s put social media icons in the email signature.

Does the client have an email signature that links to their website? Lets talk about an email campaign. How do we list build? Are the links in the email newsletter clickable?

The term “Digital marketing” made news. I attended the Dallas Digital Summit in 2013 and my world was rocked.

I remember calling our social media manager at the time and talking her freaking ear off.

We don’t have to spend hours looking up articles anymore, we can write them ourselves! And then become a real thought leader! Crickets. “Sounds like a lot of work and we aren’t the client and they don’t have time for that”

We can create CONTENT. Content is king. The next three digital summits every session became focused on content and the media mix.

What does short bite sized content look like, what does engaging content look like, email campaigns were now looking like magazines and there were marketing experts sharing sessions on the power of using different colors to generate attention and the psychology of above the fold of an email or the below the placement wise. How many times do you scroll down, how social media was becoming an obsession. Instagram hit the scene and everyone went crazy.

Feeds were now a vocabulary term for social media. Astetic became a main work for cohesive branding. Bloggers became media and social media influencers replaced every social media driven stand alone topic in 2016.
Two words they stuck out when I heard them for the first time: “Social” which was short for social media. When I heard a business man use the phrase social it was confusing. Like a slang term or being lazy. Nope, that’s what the industry was recognizing. Because social was becoming an industry. “See all these kids?” He pointed to a group of college kids on their laptops. “They are in real time commenting on the clients page while the speaker is talking. We posted a photo on Twitter, hash tagged it and now those kids are going to add fuel to the fire. Otherwise Twitter buries it”

My mind was blown. Social.

Social media wants us to do just that, be social. The more comments and recommends the better. That makes sense.
Content was the next word I head that stuck out in my mind. The content you put on your page needs to stand out. Content is king. Content strategy, content calendar.

Things are going to be more relaxed in business. Less business and more causal. Less polished more raw, more conversational and more real life. Think about it. The pandemic threw the business community for a absolute loop and even though we were all “work from home” in our PJ’s there was still this fake professional front everyone needed to have. The work from home was a intrusive place for the business community and I’ll say… refreshing. Every time I hear a dog bark on a zoom I think wow it’s a real person. Kids crying out of no where are my favorite. And though we are one year coming out of the pandemic fog the business community is trying to remember how to work together, it’s like being the new kid at school but everyone’s new “how does this all work again?”

There’s a sense of authenticity that comes with the business pandemic stories. When I’m trying to get to know a new connection I go straight for a “tell me your pandemic story” and instantly walls come down, hair goes in a virtual top bun and we are all on the same playing field from what the pandemic did to business.
but what does the future hold? We are already in this in our social media lives but we aren’t in it yet in our business lives. It’s the social media reality shows. You see them, people sharing their “days in the life” but again those are staged. I’m talking real. The business community will start to share real life, the companies that will stand out and I mean WAY out front will be the ones that are sharing it all- the unknowns, the firings, the loss of money, the real business.