By Mark Kersteen - May 16th, 2014

Content. Content, content, content. I hear about content from marketers and communicators every day. I always ask the same question: what's next?

Together, several FMCG big brand marketers have let me know what they think content is going to look like over the next few years. For businesses on the cutting edge, things like the complete integration of video into their content and intensive social listening are already in place. For others, how much of this they're taking on depends on how critical content is to reaching their customers. Whatever happens, this is what top marketers think the future of content is going to look like.

1: We’re going to see video. Lots of video.

We’re hungry to get new types of content on our customer’s screens. Mobile video is ubiquitous. Tools like Vine and Snapchat, the spread of live streaming video, and Facebook’s new autoplay feature all point towards video’s continuous growth as a way for consumers and companies to engage around a brand. However, “video” is a broad term.

I don’t just mean slick, expensive 2-3 minute YouTube productions. All I really mean by video is “pictures that move”. This could be something that works alongside text, like The New York Times’s Snow Fall, or something as simple as animated infographics or gifs.

I watched my first “product video” on a retail site the other day. A model tried on, then generally messed around with, a backpack I was thinking of getting. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was both informative and hypnotic. What If I could just hover my cursor over that product name in a blog post to watch that video play?

I’ve already spoken to companies that have dedicated agencies they use for video production, or the staff and equipment to do it in-house. There's no reason we can't just make something ourselves on our phones fifteen minutes before hitting publish. As long as it makes our content stand out, there’s no doubt we’re going to see a lot more video in the days to come.

Does that mean written content’s days are numbered? Well, they didn’t stop printing newspapers once the television came out. Video will grow, but alongside written. I imagine we’ll always be able to write a lot more content more more easily (and for less) than we’ll ever be able to package into a video.

2: Brave new channels.

The biggest problem for content right now is that there is so much, and it’s so unstructured.

Anyone who untangles that knot is going to be rewarded with a dumpster full of money, and marketers will erect a statue in their honor.

Fotolia Grafitti Like one of those, except full of money.

Medium is an early example of something that’s maybe trying to do that. Not only can you easily post and share attractively designed pieces of writing, but Medium itself sorts and shares this content with users who might be interested.

There are going to be more ways to get our messages out there, but more importantly, there are going to be more ways for customers to find that message.

Anyone can tell you that Vine or Facebook or Snapchat won’t be around forever, and that something new and better and more revolutionary is going to show up and sweep us all off our collective feet. There’s going to be a new way for us to share content with consumers by the end of the year—a device or an application, there’ll be something—but the real value is going to be in a product that picks, chooses, organizes, and offers up content for our customers, in one form or another.

We have to keep our ears to the ground and listen for the next big thing in content to come stampeding towards us, or we’re going to get trampled.

Fotolia Horses 800 I think I'd rather be the horses than whoever those horses are running over, wouldn't you?

3: We’re not going to make it.

We’re not going to make it, anymore. Content, that is. At least, not all of it.

A study by Crowdtap found that thirty percent of millennials’ media time is spent with content created and curated by their peers. It’s not enough to make great content, we have to make great content that is going to be shared by our audience, with our audience. Or, even better, we have to make our audience make content for us.

I doubt there’s ever going to be a more efficient way to cut through the noise in our space.

To do this right, we’re going to have to take advantage of a field that’s growing as fast as content: social listening and social advocacy. Measuring and influencing how our consumers share what they make (and what we make for them) is going to be a deciding factor in the success of any content strategy. However, if we can understand how our consumers interact with one another online, we can start working with them to create the most relevant, valuable and entertaining material we’ve made yet.

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