7 Content Marketing Predictions for 2014: An early look

 Jayson DeMers, marketing blogger at AudienceBloom.com and contributor at Forbes.com, reveals his predictions as to where content marketing, as an integral tool for B2B lead generation, is headed in the coming year 2014.

“We’re poised to see explosive growth in the way businesses ‘do’ marketing,” says DeMers, and this is partly due to the fact that consumers “increasingly crave the type of genuine, customer-focused information”.

So what should the industry expect to see next year? Here is a summary of his predictions:

1. Content marketing will finally be defined. DeMers believes that even though most business today are engaged with producing content to generate leads, it is still an ambiguous concept that needs defining. In 2014, marketer would be able to “explain what content marketing is, how it aligns with their larger business goals, and why it’s important.”
2. The rise of “Directors of Content”. As the role of content marketing expands within an organization, the top responsibility of marketers would also be geared towards managing content production and use, thus making a “director of content” (or any alternative title) the top marketing job to shoot for.
3. Mobile Content will be the winning ingredient. It has been long predicted that mobile usage will overtake desktop in the next 2 years. Consequently, marketers would have to adjust strategies and give more focus to mobile content more than it has ever been given.
4. SAAS companies will help marketers in calculating content ROI.Nobody has really come up with a clear measurement of content ROI; in fact, nobody is even 100% sure it’s measurable. In 2014, however, due to the imminent rise of content, software companies will see the demand for a content measurement tool and respond to the call.
5. Marketers will “attempt” to automate content marketing. Businesses will find ways to make content marketing more efficient by the use of automation, but according to DeMers, “these attempts will result in lower quality content, which will cause entire strategies to backfire”.
6. Google+ and Slideshare will be the BFFs of B2B content marketers.Content dissemination will be a crucial element of content marketing, and these 2 platforms will make it easier due to its influence in Google Author rank and Authorship.
7.  Brick-and-mortar businesses will thrive on location-based content marketing. Again, this is proportionate with the rise of mobile devices next year. As a response, businesses will tap location-based services to incorporate into their content mix. “While this technology already exists, it will become pervasive by the end of 2014,” DeMers concludes.

This content originally appeared at 7 Content Marketing Predictions for 2014: An early look