Mar 7, 2024
Top 10 Content Marketing Trends in 2024
One thing creators and marketers can count on is that content marketing trends are constantly changing. In 2024...
One thing creators and marketers can count on is that content marketing trends are constantly changing. In 2024, you can bet that AI is on everyone’s mind as companies and marketers race to explore and expand its capabilities.
“In 2024, the biggest marketing trends will center around the possibilities of AI,” said President of Google Americas and Global Partners, Sean Downey.
According to data and insights from Semrush’s 2024 AI Content Marketing Report, artificial intelligence (AI) is the hottest content marketing trend in 2024, with 67% of small businesses already using AI for content and SEO tasks.
With predictive and generative AI exploding with new possibilities, content creators and marketers are redefining their strategies and processes. Synergizing AI with creativity is the future of content marketing. And the need for human intervention has never been more essential.
Here are the top 10 trends to guide your content marketing strategy and help you stand out in 2024.
1: Use AI Powered Tools for Humans
Most companies today use AI tools for their content strategy - to understand their audience, identify trends, and find data and research quickly. AI can be implemented to improve content quality, conduct deeper research, create videos, and make marketing easier. But it’s not meant to replace human writers or creatives.
The goal of AI is to handle the heavy lifting and give creatives and strategists more time to write and personalize for a human audience. According to HubSpot research, companies are using generative AI to:
Brainstorm ideas or angles
Repurpose existing content for a different audience, format, or channel
Write basic copy, drafts, and outlines
Change the tone of marketing content
Create images and basic videos
How businesses in 2024 use AI tools
Source: Semrush
Using AI as the foundation for your content, writers and editors can build upon drafts. Enrich it with personal stories to connect with the audience on a deeper level. After AI lays the groundwork, writers should inject expertise, experiences, brand storytelling, style, and visual elements to stand out in the information overload.
AI only works great with human oversight. Always make sure your writers review AI-generated content, checking its tone of voice and style, as well as consulting subject matter experts (SMEs) and editors.
93% of businesses review and edit AI-generated content. Source: Semrush
How do you ensure your AI content is human first?
Use AI as a tool to empower content creation, not to replace writers and editors
Use AI for research and to improve quality—but always fact check
Create content focused on your audience, their needs, and experience
Personalize it with your own voice, style, and unique expertise
#2: Create Content that Is Helpful and Personalized
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT 4 are simplifying content research and creation for teams. But we are also seeing an unprecedented volume of low-quality and inaccurate content. While AI is a scalable, fast solution for content generation, some businesses are bypassing the expertise of professional writers and editors.
At the same time, AI is set to enhance the quality of SEO content and elevate user expectations. Google's emphasis on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) highlights the significance of creating accurate and genuine content – the same attributes that users expect. So, it is more crucial today to show evidence of human experience in your content.
Let’s not forget about Google’s Search Generative Experience in the SERPs, offering AI-generated responses to search queries and follow-up searches. Users are likely to spend more time in the Google search results and less time clicking through to your site.
You can protect your website traffic against this trend by providing experiences that can’t be easily replaced by AI summaries. Your content needs to be more compelling than ever to compete with SGE.
How can you make your content stand out?
Showcase your brand voice and style
Embed multimedia content, videos, and interactive elements in articles and blogs
Fact check for accuracy and consistency
Provide personal experiences and helpful examples
Collaborate with subject matter experts and contributors
Use writers and editors to personalize and adjust
Visit Lake Tahoe embeds YouTube videos in their blogs to keep users engaged and scrolling. Adding interactive and visual elements to your content will significantly increase user engagement.
With AI-generated content everywhere, creating more research-driven, unique, and impactful content will remain an essential SEO strategy in 2024. With Google’s Generative AI Search and AI-driven changes, your content needs to be valuable and satisfying to compete in the search results. Adding interactive elements, comprehensive research, and insights will help you surface and hold a reader’s attention. We can also boost off-site SEO with high-quality backlinks for authority.
Now you know the changes perpetuated by AI don’t end here. We can expect search engines to get even better at understanding and interpreting user queries, the context behind searches, personalizing search results, and assessing content quality.
#3: Boost SEO Performance with AI and Human Synergy
Based SEMrush research, 65% of companies surveyed saw an improvement in SEO performance using AI-generated content edited by humans. There are several best practices you should follow if you want your content strategy to perform well and resonate with your audience.
Combine AI with original research and expertise
According to Google’s search guidance, high-quality, engaging content will rank far better in search engine results than any other content. So, Google doesn’t care how it’s created– either written by a human or AI. What matters is that the content follows E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness) standards.
The best way to approach it is to create a synergy of AI tools, writers, and subject matter experts (SMEs). Enter a detailed prompt into an AI tool that includes insights from subject matter experts or customer feedback. With your AI draft foundation, use a writer to sprinkle the human touch, brand voice, case studies, stories, humor, video, and graphics.
Using AI tools, make sure your writers and editors:
Review and fact-check information
Edit content to demonstrate E-E-A-T
Review content for brand voice and consistency
Add a disclaimer that AI was used in content creation and validated by experts
Folks, the output is only as good as the input. Create detailed yet simple prompts to guide AI, the same way you create content briefs for writers and edit drafts. Talk to AI like you talk to real writers to get the results you desire.
Combine real-time SEO insights
Most AI tools like ChatGPT don’t provide real-time SEO data on keywords, search intent, and volume, etc. You can combine AI with SEO tools, like Google Analytics and Semrush, and manual research to analyze the SERP and understand the search intent. There are also AI-driven content studios that integrate AI capabilities and real-time SEO insights to automate creating content optimized for higher search rankings. These tools can help you boost your SEO strategy by optimizing your existing draft for target keywords, to cluster your keywords, and improve title tags to increase CTRs.
Remember, success in AI-generated content balances innovation with human expertise, ensuring originality and E-E-A-T standards. Combining AI with SEO data and automated tools can optimize content creation, making it more relevant and effective for search rankings.
#4: Create Content that is Honest and Authentic
We all want to create fresh and exciting content in an AI-powered world. Guess what? AI technology has inspired an unexpected counterculture that creators are psyched about.
With all the noise and the pandemic in our rearview, people gravitate towards genuine interactions. Raw, unfiltered content resonates more deeply than any high-production video ever could. This trend is rooted in our desire for authenticity, to connect with people rather than polished personas. Content with honesty and personality will resonate with your audience. Be authentic, be human, be vulnerable, and show the “behind the scenes” of your brand.
For example, a fitness company interacts with its community on Facebook through live workout videos from real coaches to engage with community members. Garage settings and mishaps make the videos more human and credible and help users relate to the brand.
In the new AI landscape, audiences crave genuine content that reflects a brand's true personality. Leveraging AI tools in content creation will free up time to focus on more personal, human interactions. Brands showing real-life elements, like live videos, and human stories, inspire stronger audience relationships.
#5: Improve Click-Through Rates with Refreshed Meta
With more complex elements on SERPs, like AI-generated summaries and featured snippets, users may not need to click through to your site or article. And businesses will continue to face decreasing CTRs in search.
One of the hottest 2024 content marketing trends is to use AI tools to conduct SEO analysis, which includes improving click-through rates of old and new content. AI tools can identify content that could be optimized to improve CTR.
You can use specific ChatGPT prompts to find which of your pages could use a refresh on the meta and title tags. Think about it. AI-powered search engines answer questions more efficiently by offering featured snippets, related questions, and knowledge panels in search results. So, why not use AI to improve your CTRs by providing meaningful updates to your content.
Here the steps to use to determine which pages and posts have lower click-through rates:
Open the Google Search Console account
Open the Search Results tab
Export your data in a CSV file (you’ll need the website URLs, click-through rates, and average ranking position).
Upload the CSV file to an AI tool like ChatGPT 4
Enter the prompt: You are an SEO expert analyzing search performance and maximizing engagement within SERPs. Which of the following pages has lower than expected CTRs based on their average search position?
Using the results of your prompt, determine which links are under performing and focus on those. You can also use the AI chat to revise the title tags and optimize the meta description to increase the page’s CTR. These small but meaningful changes to your existing meta tags can increase traffic to your site, enhancing your content marketing strategy.
AI tools can provide deeper insights to optimize content help with your SEO tasks, including your click-through rates.
#6: Create AI Supported Video Content
With SEO becoming more complex, short-form video and social media continue to grow in popularity and effectiveness. Research shows that short-form video offers the highest ROI and is currently the format used by most marketers. Video should become an essential part of your content strategies and marketing campaigns.
In 2024, we are going to see the rise of AI-supported video content. AI video tools will help businesses create and personalize video content to your target audience. AI-created video experiences can include everything from talking head videos (avatars) using synthetic voice to webinars.
Video trends for 2024 include:
AI tools for all aspects of video creation
Short-form video
Cross-platform marketing strategies
Smartphone video creation and production
Silent videos
Personalized videos
Live video and virtual events
AI plug-ins like InVideo, SubMagic, Scena.ai, and Synthesia make it easy to create personalized video content tailored to your audience – from ads and webinars to onboarding, training and sales videos. With the help of AI, video creators can:
Personalize a video message to an individual
Create interactive videos and webinars
Auto-transcribe audio to make it accessible
In 2024, short-form videos will continue as a hot content marketing trend. Videos that are professional, not over-produced, and feel genuine and authentic will do the best. Remember, strategic scripting is important to ensure consistent and compelling content.
#7: Focus on Niche Content and Quality
In 2024, focus on quality over quantity in content marketing, with AI aiding niche content creation for a highly engaged audience. It’s not about the number of blog posts on your website—it’s about targeting relevant, hyper-targeted topics and creating comprehensive content to cover them.
AI will be a huge driver in niche content marketing. It simplifies researching and crafting content tailored for a specific audience, ensuring every word resonates and provides value. The trending conversations around the E-E-A-T framework are confirming this shift, prioritizing relevance and context over volume.
If you want your audience to stay on your website and for Google to play nice with the E-E-A-T framework, you’ll need to understand and address your audience’s pain points and needs.
You can use AI to:
Define your niche and understand your target audience
Create an ideal reader persona based on your audience demographics
Streamline the writing process
Prompt AI to evaluate if your blog posts and landing pages are optimized for your buyer persona and then to create a content outline focusing on their challenges. You can use it to generate unique, SEO-rich, and up-to-date content on any niche topic.
AI tools can help you define your niche and create content that is better personalized to your audience. Of course, keep a human-first approach at the forefront of your content strategy.
#8: Create Live Streams on Your Favorite Platform
In 2024, live streaming remains a powerful content marketing strategy for fostering genuine connections with your audience. Users crave live, real, unedited content more than ever.
“AI tools can help optimize and repurpose content for various platforms, “says Jaime Nash, founder of The Shed Creative. “Whether TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook, try live-streaming a product reveal, a behind-the-scenes look at your brand, or a workshop to uniquely engage with your users.”
Today, it’s all about real relationships and building community. We will see more raw, unfiltered content focusing on a single channel. Live webinars and workshops will play a key role in creating authentic online learning experiences. Viewers seek to connect with the individuals behind the camera for unedited and authentic moments. Establishing a personal connection to your brand will be driving force in modern content engagement.
Tip: Create live, unscripted video that resonates with your audience and focus on the platforms that perform best for you.
#9: Use AI for Podcast Optimization
Podcasting is one of the world’s fastest-growing media channels and can be a creative and original part of your content outreach. However, reaching new audiences and ranking in search can be a challenge.
If podcasting is part of your content strategy in 2024, AI tools can you save time writing, producing, and marketing it. AI-supported podcasts can help you appear in search engines and reach new listeners.
Using AI technology, Google now indexes audio files. This means your podcast episodes can rank in the search results with proper optimization.
To get it right, you can use AI podcast repurposing tools, which automatically repurpose episodes into transcripts, show notes, blogs, social media posts, newsletters, and video clips. Transcribing podcast episodes can lead to a significant boost in online visibility, with studies showing up to a 6.68% increase in search traffic and a 50% rise in keyword rankings.
AI audio tools can help podcast creators:
Suggest content ideas, talking points, or interview questions
Transcribe audio
Summarize text and audio files for show notes and blog posts
Optimize titles and meta descriptions for relevant keywords
Create royalty-free music
Enhance sound quality
With Google’s audio indexing, podcasts will be an effective tool to rank in search results and reach new audiences in 2024. Use AI tools can help speed up your podcasting tasks, like writing show notes and descriptions.
#10 Energize Your Strategy with Social Media and Blogs
Social media is the #1 marketing channel today. It has become the highest ROI marketing channel as social commerce continues to evolve as a means of discovery and sales. Social media is the most preferred product discovery channel for every demographic generation, from Gen Z and Millennials to Boomers. The top social platforms are Facebook Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.
According to a HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report, 59% of marketers who sell on social media say they made more sales in 2023 than 2022 and that is expected to increase in 2024. Content creators can leverage AI to help find trending topics, create content calendars, write outlines and drafts, and make short videos.
Blogging is also one of the top media formats marketers will leverage in 2024. How-to articles are the most popular content formats followed by lists, and news and trends based on the HubSpot report.
Inject a social media and blog strategy into your efforts for impact in 2024. As you use AI, always add personal stores, real experiences, case studies, and human authenticity to make a deeper connect with your audience.
Stay Ahead of the Content Marketing Trends in 2024
With 4.62 billion pages on the Indexed Web, 347.3 billion emails sent every day, and 100,000 Google searches every second, the demand for high-quality, original, and results-driven content is clearly in demand in 2024.
As more companies adopt AI tools and automation, and more technologies emerge, the possibilities in content marketing seem infinite. But even as we embrace AI, we have to remember that we are creating for humans and people want authentic experiences. For your content to stand out, it must have a unique voice, expertise, creativity, and empathy.
By clearly defining your niche, your target audience, and their needs, you can create content that connects in an authentic way. Incorporate videos, live streaming, podcasts, and blogs into your content strategy to foster engagement and rank in the new search landscape.
2024 will be the year of harnessing the power of AI tools for content strategy, creation, and SEO. Make sure you add human oversight into your content workflow, eliciting professional writers and editor to stir in personalization, brand tone, real experiences, and subject authority. While AI will speed up the creative process, it’s only the human touch that will make an honest, deeper connection with your human audience.
About The Shed Creative
The Shed Creative is a boutique design and content marketing agency based out of Pennsylvania and Northern California, energizing businesses and brands with creative strategies, visual design, and performance-driven content. We help brands get discovered, connect with audiences, grow their visibility, and stand out.
Meet The Shed Creative team and learn how we create purpose-driven content in an AI world. For information on our design and content services or for sales requests, contact Mike Sperian, Head of Business Development, at mike@theshedcreative.com.
