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The Content Marketing Industry in 2022

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The Content Marketing Industry in 2022

Sponsored by Semrush

The new year is well underway. Marketing directors have laid out their plans, and their content machines are revving back into action. But what new trends might 2022 have in store for our industry?

For Semrush’s annual State of Content Marketing Global Report, we looked at the data, analyzing more than 500k blog posts and 200k tweets, interviewing experts, and surveying more than 1,500 marketing professionals from all across the world.

Ninety-seven percent of respondents say content forms part of their marketing strategy. As we dug into their additional answers and insights, we saw indications of some big changes on the horizon. Below, we look at a few of the highlights from this research and what they might mean for your content marketing initiatives in the upcoming year.

Top survey highlights

1645116373 262 The Content Marketing Industry in 2022

Nearly all 1,500 respondents use content as part of their strategy, but a significant number (42%) are just getting started with content marketing. In contrast, only 19% feel they have a mature content marketing system in place. With such a high concentration of content marketing newbies dipping their toes in the water, it’s clear the industry is still experiencing considerable growth.

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Here are some additional points we found interesting:

There’s still progress to be made: Of our respondents, 91% said that content marketing was successful to some degree. We analyzed this to mean that content marketing is here to stay, and it’s becoming more effective and sophisticated. However, with only 19% reporting that their content efforts are extremely successful, there is still a long way to go.

91% of marketing pros surveyed by @Semrush achieved success with their content marketing in 2021. Explore the highlights to find out what worked and what didn’t! Click To Tweet

Content is heavily concentrated on the early stages of the customer journey: The top three goals marketers pursue with their content are:

  1. Increase brand awareness: 45%
  2. Attract more traffic to our website: 37%
  3. Generate leads: 36%

When it comes to success, 78% of respondents that achieved their goals have a documented content marketing strategy. Compare that to companies that fell short of their aims – 81% percent of them do not have a documented content strategy – and our advice here is clear: Define your goals, write your content plans down, and then activate them!

Other reported factors contributing to success include running content audits, investing in paid promotions, and growing the content team.

Quality matters: Marketers in our survey also say that content quality is the primary driver behind organic ranking success, followed by the volume of content output. The benefits of creating high-quality content hold true for other desirable content marketing outcomes, as well.

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Perhaps these are not huge revelations, but they certainly underscore the importance of writing well and providing value to your audience. Of course, creating quality content means more than simply writing good copy. It’s also about considering the informational needs of your customers as you are planning your content initiatives. Ensure that each content piece answers the right questions, creates a good user experience, and provides actionable value.

Insights from content marketing experts

We also spoke to a number of content marketing industry experts who gave us their perspective on what works well, and what’s not working anymore. Here are some of the highlights from these interviews:

Humanize your content: Henneke Duistermaat, the founder of Enchanting Marketing, says originality is super important if you want to get noticed: Do the same as everyone else and you’ll just camouflage yourself. At the same time, she says that you should weave original stories into your content and treat your output like a personal conversation with your reader. Making your content human-relatable and personally relevant to the people you want to consume it will help you stand out from the competition in 2022.

Follow the buyers: Along the same lines, Kathryn Strachan, owner and managing director at Copy House, emphasizes the importance of creating a human connection through your B2B content, as well. She points out that these customers will want different information at different stages of their buying journey. This means you should map each piece of content to the marketing funnel before you write it to ensure that you’re addressing their most pressing needs and answering the questions they have at that precise time.

Use creativity to spark a connection: KoMarketing senior director of digital marketing Casie Gillette asserts that telling a story with your content is important across all formats and channels. Like Henneke, Casie says that good storytelling means understanding and connecting with your audience. Her major takeaway is that creativity is key, whether you’re promoting a product, creating an ad, or writing a blog post.

Measure for clicks: Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO at Orbit Media Studios, Inc., says ranking isn’t the most important SEO metric to track, it’s clicks and the click-through rates. And once you have people on your page, you need to be memorable and engaging – that’s what will drive brand awareness and long-term success.

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Go heavy on new video formats: Adam Connell, Founder of Blogging Wizard and Startup Bonsai, says that short-form videos are going to stay engaging throughout 2022 and could be an important way to drive growth. He mentions the wealth of video-sharing platforms available, including TikTok, Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories – as well as Pinterest Idea Pins, YouTube Shorts, and more.

Keep a sharp eye on what’s working: Michael Brenner from Marketing Insider Group says it’s time to focus on content audits. These, he says, will help you discover what already delivers results. Part of this means also looking for opportunities to improve the content you already have in the bank.

Expect opportunities to open up: Liraz Postan, international SEO, speaker, and founder of Liraz Postan LTD, commented on signs that more small businesses are investing in content marketing, which may mean more open positions for talented content marketers in the coming year.

About Semrush

1645116373 300 The Content Marketing Industry in 2022Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that enables businesses globally to run search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content, social media, and competitive research campaigns and gets measurable results from online marketing. Semrush offers insights and solutions for companies to build, manage, and measure campaigns across various marketing channels. Semrush, with over 79,000 paying customers, is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Philadelphia, Dallas, Prague, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Limassol.




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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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