Digital Marketing in 2019: Content, Video & Voice Optimisation — Sonder Marketing

06 Dec

As we move into 2019 more and more content is coming out; predicting the trends, pitting one strategy against another, not to mention the wild claims ‘SEO is dead’. There are predictions that people will seek answers from specific websites (like Quora, Medium) instead of Googling, some are saying social media marketing is about to die because of the price of competition. One prediction claimed that AI would curate and develop content for us (yuck). So, here’s another large piece of content, making predictions for the year ahead. Though, we promise it’s based on evidence, data, and common sense.

Grab the Windex because we’re shining up our Sonder crystal ball. We think 2019 will be a year of empowerment and invigoration for copywriters and content curators. We see video content cementing itself as the new infographic. There’s a vision of Google Homes changing the way we optimise. Let’s have a look.

Video Content

Video content is about to become the new infographic. Google owns YouTube but even if it wasn’t one of the biggest websites, not to mention video sharing platforms in the world, Google would probably still favour its videos above all else. The expectation is that while you’ll upload your informative video to YouTube on its own, you’ll embed a link to said video in your content to strengthen it. So, to take two things our favourite search engine loves and marry them, we could embed a YouTube video full of insightful information on a mobile-friendly web page that’s filled with quality, insightful, and well organised content.

The idea of video can sound really daunting. Especially if you’ve only just wrapped your head around content marketing. It’s not all that hard though, get a phone with a decent camera or if you’re feeling slightly fancier (and believe in investing more to receive more) then head to JB Hi-Fi and purchase yourself a drone. You can create video content in two ways. First, film yourself doing the task and then add a voice over explaining each step. The second option is to just explain it as you go on camera. The second makes for more natural content with a conversational tone and it’s more enjoyable for the user. The first, however is a neat option if you’re nervous on camera or you’re working in a noisy area (car workshop). You should be able to upload and edit the video after a couple of YouTube tutorials and playing around with iMovie.

We think using a drone to film content would be a really sweet way to kick off your content marketing strategy if you’re in a highly technical, outdoors kind of field. Like mining, surveying, construction.

Voice Search

Both users and marketing professionals alike are watching the Artificial Intelligence space pretty closely. Users are benefiting from the convenience, they’re using Siri and Google Assistant on their phones, they’re waking up to an AI Assistant. We’ve talked a fair amount about voice search on the Sonder blog before so read about how to optimise for search first, if you like.

To expand, though. Like we said, video content is becoming huge. There’s potential that the two will meet in 2019 and Google may prefer video content in voice search queries. So when you ask your Google Home a question, the answer could well come from a YouTube video. This makes a lot of sense because as we know, long-tail keywords and authentic, conversational wording is favoured in voice search. Writing will very rarely sound as conversational as just speaking out loud does.

The key to making your video content rank for voice search at the moment is to:

• Work out what the question you’re answering with your video is, identify the keywords within that question and bid on them
• Transcribe your video
• Rather than opting for long videos, create shorter pieces that refer to one question or idea
• Include long-tail keywords in your video’s description
• Tag the video with your keywords

As well as this, Google Actions and Alexa Skills are now available. These are services readily available to help you optimise for voice search. For developers though, they can use this software to create software applications that are known as ‘Actions’. Which extends the Google Assistant’s functionality and abilities but also provides another channel of marketing, cool.

Content Marketing

We’ve mentioned content marketing a lot already but it’s still worth giving its own write up down here. Writers, videographers, even photographers, it’s our time to shine. Some people have speculated that SEO is dying and there’ll be more of a push for social marketing. It definitely depends business to business, but for a really strong majority of businesses, SEO is still essential. Google is slowly but surely bettering its algorithms to try and ‘enforce’ quality content. It’s eliminating listicles and click-through stories, it’s eliminating clickbait, it’s fighting the good fight. Copywriters and curators everywhere should be cheering because now, where it really does require 2,000 words to explain something properly, you can take it.

Originally published at sonder.com.au on December 6, 2018.