Content Marketing: The Strategy, Impact and Action

Over the past year, content marketing has undergone significant transformations, driven by advancements in technology and shifts in consumer behavior.

As a multifaceted discipline, it can flex to the needs of brands or customers. Since the practice encompasses tactics, it still serves the purpose to create, distribute, and manage content to attract and engage a target audience.

There are several topics that have dominated the conversation in content marketing including:

AI’s Impact on Content
Short-Form Video
User Generated Content
Authentic Storytelling
Influencer Partnerships

Content Creation and Strategy

Effective content marketing begins with a well-thought-out strategy. It needs to aligns with your business goals and audience needs. Developing a content plan involves understanding your target audience, setting clear objectives, and determining the types of content that will resonate most.

Audience Research: Identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience to tailor content accordingly.
Content Planning: Develop an editorial calendar to schedule content publication, ensuring consistency and relevance.
Content Types: Diversify your content formats, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts, to cater to different audience preferences.

Our global partners have provided details and direction for these topics. With the many elements of content marketing, the best place to start is by developing a strategic approach. It helps to outline the goals, attitudes and potentially channels that will be leveraged.

AI’s Impact on Content

There are a few directions this conversion can go. It can talk about how to use AI to help generate new content. However, it can also talk about how AI seems to be propelling fake news and the trustworthiness of news sources. We have focused more on the ways it is impacting the trustworthiness of content to help make people aware of the changes and challenges presented by AI.

Short-Form Video and User Generated Content

We combined these categories because they often go hand in hand. With the explosion of user-generated content, video is now the most popular format. It can provide up to 10x more engagement than static posts.

There are several formats for user-generated content. From influencers to employees, content generation can be sourced in several different ways. However, it is not enough to simply generate something, it needs to be engaging and elevated content.

3 Ways to Elevate Your Short-Form Content
¿Cuándo se debería contemplar influenciadores o creadores de contenido en las estrategias de comunicación? (When should influencers or content creators be considered in communication strategies?)
Evaluating and Adjusting your Social Content for Better Engagement
How to Embrace Employee-Generated-Content?
Interesting Reads: Turn Your Staff Into Influencers By Leveraging Employee-Generated Content
The Perks of User-Generated Content
The Power of user-generated content

Authentic Storytelling

From thought leadership to brand storytelling, customers get more savvy every day on what is real and what is manufactured. Authentic storytelling and purpose driven content still ring true for customers and can be some of the most effective assets in Content Marketing.

Well-crafted stories can help you grab and hold not only the attention, but the emotion of a customer. People not only want to feel good about the product they buy, but the company that makes that product. There are many ways to harness the power of storytelling including customer success stories, leadership communications and behavioral change.

6 essential reasons for integrating customer success stories in B2B marketing
Behaviorální komunikace není manipulace. Přizpůsobte se cílové skupině (Behavioral communication is not manipulation. Adapt to the target group)
Boost Your Brand Storytelling Strategy in 2025
El storytelling empresarial y la magia de las narrativas que emocionan y conectan (Business storytelling and the magic of narratives that excite and connect)
How to use owned channels to amplify earned stories and establish thought leadership
Partnering with Famous Personalities to Boost Visibility in Your Communication Strategy
To communicate change impactfully, start with a story
Why Genuine and Purpose-Driven Content is More Important Than Ever Before

Connecting With Audiences

It is not only important to have good stories, but there are other important elements to the process including research on the target audience, creating inclusive content and having strong visual communications to make an impact.

Inclusive Content

Design

Creating an in-house writing style guide
Zonder beelden geen boodschap: Het belang van visuele content (No images, no message: The importance of visual content)
Bad Data Visualizations: Three Mistakes Marketers Make and How to Avoid Them

Targeted Regional Research

With the content marketing practice always changing, it is important to evaluate what you are doing and make adjustments as the technology and audiences change. You can also get the freshest insights by signing up for our monthly newsletter.