• Storytelling will continue to shine
• Ranking outside of Google will become even more important
• An increased focus on brand awareness
• Employee-generated content will become more popular
• Making better use of what you already have
• Structured content planning
If you work in digital marketing, then you’ll already know how essential it is to keep up to date with the latest developments in content. It helps your brand to stay relevant and keeps your audience engaged.
To help you keep up, it’s time for our annual blog post, where we take a look at the content marketing trends we expect to see in 2025. We always enjoy writing this post as it gives us a chance to reflect on the past year and then look ahead to the future. It’s a great guide to help shape your content plans over the next 12 months.
The good news is that content isn’t going anywhere, so make sure you’re considering it when you’re putting together your digital marketing strategy for 2025. It shouldn’t be about following every trend but rather ensuring that your approach remains agile enough to accommodate the updates and changes as they happen in content marketing.
Read on to find out what’s will be big for content marketing in 2025 and how you can leverage these trends for continued success.
Storytelling will continue to shine
We’ve heard nothing but AI, AI, AI for the last couple of years, but even though tools such as ChatGPT may have their place for some as a helping hand, nothing is going to replace real-life writing and, in particular, storytelling.
Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) framework promotes creating content which answers users’ questions, and their Helpful Content updates prioritise content that users genuinely find useful rather than content that’s written just to perform well on search.
Writing for people first will continue to make your brand stand out against a sea of AI-generated content. Google also favours original data like surveys or research.
Ranking outside of Google will become even more important
Although there are many different search engines, Google has been the most popular one since the early 2000s and continues to dominate globally with a 90% market share in 2024. (source: Statcounter)
Because of this dominance, SEO has primarily been about optimising sites to rank well on Google’s search engine results pages or SERPs.
However, times are changing, and users are starting to search for information in different places. We mentioned ChatGPT earlier, and as well as its other uses, it has its own search engine.
The ChatGPT search engine is currently only available to paid users, but there are plans to roll the tool out to free users as well. The search engine works in a similar way to the search engines you’re used to – you type in your query which starts a conversation with the AI tool. And ChatGPT isn’t the only one – other AI tools are also launching their own search engines, with a new one popping up every day (or so it feels!)
As well as new tools, search is becoming smarter. Google launched Google Discover on its app in 2018. This feature recommends content to users based on their interests and previous searches by highlighting a mix of evergreen content and news. Videos and photography are emphasised.
It will therefore become increasingly important to optimise web content for AI search engines and Google Discover over the next year, and businesses that start working on this early will find themselves at a competitive advantage.
Keep an eye out for our deeper dives into how you can appear on these channels over the next few months.
An increased focus on brand awareness
So far, we’ve mainly looked at what you can do on your own channels, but what about earned and paid media? Off the back of the rise of ChatGPT’s search engine, it seems that one of the ranking factors for this may be the number of times your brand is mentioned online, so it’s worth factoring this into your content strategy.
When you’re planning your budgets, have a think about partnerships with other complementary businesses and blogs where you could post editorial features for example. It’s also worth thinking about investing in online PR, especially if you have plenty to shout about over the coming year.
Employee-generated content will become more popular
You’ve heard of user-generated content, but employee-generated content (EGC) is a new acronym to take into consideration. It’s a fantastic way to help build your brand through different voices and show your customers some transparency.
LinkedIn is the obvious place to start, as a social media channel that’s B2B. If you’re yet to leverage the power of LinkedIn, make 2025 the year you start. It’s easier to reach people on LinkedIn, compared to some of the other social media channels.
But don’t confine your efforts to LinkedIn: EGC will work just as well across your other socials and on your website.
Some examples of employee-generated content:
– A blog post about “a day in the life” of one of your employees
– Short-form video of an employee talking about a product
– Employees answering customer questions
The key to successful EGC is to keep it authentic and unscripted. The realness of this kind of content is what appeals to users, so make sure it isn’t too contrived.
Making better use of what you already have
While, of course, it’s essential to create new content, if you’ve got a website that’s been live for a few years, there’s a good chance you’ll have plenty of content that’s underperforming or just not serving you as well as it could.
The key here is to revise and review your existing content to ensure that it remains up-to-date and relevant. Research shows that regularly updating your content can increase weekly traffic by as much as 55% (source: Alyssa Corso).
Here at The Content Marketing Team, we’ve worked on content reinvigoration projects for several brands and seen excellent results.
Now is a great time to perform a content audit of your site to see what’s performing well and what isn’t. Mark posts with one of three labels – keep, bin, refresh – and then start to work through them.
Structured content planning
With more and more to do in terms of content, it’s vital to get your ducks in a row from the outset. Start by thinking about the themes you want for your content this year, and this will help to inform the rest of your strategy.
The key to a successful content plan is to build in enough flexibility so that you can be reactive while keeping consistency with your messaging and brand.
Looking for support with content in 2025?
With all of the changes in search and technology over the past few years, it’s been a busy time for content marketers, and it’s not looking as if it’s going to slow down any time soon! By keeping these trends in mind while developing your content strategy for the year ahead, you’ll set yourself up for success.
If you’d like a hand with content generation, enhancement or consolidation, all with an SEO focus, just give us a shout and we’ll happily talk you through how we can support you.
