As we approach the halfway point in 2024, it’s a good time to check in on what is making waves in the content creation world. At this point, it’s common knowledge that quality content is the ticket to any successful website, but because the landscape is always changing, just great content isn’t always enough.
For years it felt like creators were constantly pivoting to chase the next social media trend, but now that social platforms have less prevalence than they used to, the world of content creation looks more different than ever before. In fact, a recent study from Gartner found that 50% of consumers plan to abandon or significantly limit their interactions with social media by 2025.
So with user behaviors changing, what does the future of content creation actually look like as we head into the second half of 2024? Here are a few trends to watch.
AI-Generated Content
No surprise here that the rise of artificial intelligence( AI) is the top trend to watch for this year, and likely many years to come. The explosion of AI and predictive models like ChatGPT have changed the game for content creators and editors who already have too much on their plate. AI-powered editorial tools can help writers by generating ideas, suggesting headlines, and even drafting entire blogs, articles, or social posts.
AI-generated headline suggestions on RebelMouse.
However, it is important to remember that there is no replacement for actual human creativity. Instead, AI can be a powerful tool to enhance human originality and productivity by helping creators deliver the best content possible to its readers. Click here to learn more about how AI can transform websites.
Voice-Optimized Content
Voice-enabled devices and voice search have become increasingly popular in recent years, which means optimizing content for vocal interactions is important to consider as 2024 chugs along. Creating voice-optimized content means tailoring your content to align with the way people speak to voice assistants like Alexa, Google Home, or Siri. This means using casual, conversational language that’s easy to understand.
One perk of creating voice-optimized content is that it naturally will help you with your SEO strategy as well. By creating content that's optimized for voice, you should:
✔ ️Answer Common Questions: Anticipating questions that your audience may naturally ask and answering them succinctly benefits voice-enabled devices and increases your visibility across search.
✔ Structure Your Content: Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to make it easy for voice assistants to understand the most important information. Having a good taxonomy across your website will also increase your search performance.
✔ Optimize for Featured Snippets: Voice assistants will pull information and answers from featured snippets in search results, so it’s important that your site has snippets that are concise and helpful.
Here’s an example of a snippet answering a question from voice search:
Sourced from Semrush.
While optimizing for voice search seems a little unnatural to content creators focused on writing and editing, it can actually maximize your reach. Prioritizing natural language queries will only help your audience find exactly what they are looking for.
Personalized Content Experiences
These days users have the liberty to be more choosy — which means the more that content meets their individual needs, the better. By creating content with individual readers in mind, publishers can connect with their users on a deeper level, which will help nurture loyalty and repeat visits. Also, taking the time to craft personalized content experiences demonstrates to your audience that you have a deeper understanding of their needs, which can be a key differentiator from your competitors.
Here are some examples of personalized content that can enhance the user journey::
✔ Personalized Product Recommendations: E-commerce sites can use data like past purchases and browser history to recommend specific products to users. The advancement of AI is making this even more efficient and a bigger revenue driver than ever before. Click here to learn more.
✔ Targeted Email Campaigns: Once you have insights about your audience, you can easily segment them by interests for email campaigns. Personalized emails can feature articles that meet these interests, special offers, and unique CTAs.
✔ Customized News Feeds: Using content aggregators and news feeds is a great way to cater content to users based on everything from past reading history to social media habits. This is also a perfect way to personalize content for readers across different platforms.
Content Localization and Globalization
One of the best parts of the open web is that it dissolves geographical boundaries. On the flip side, sometimes content can isolate certain users if it's not adapted to resonate with different groups of people in different areas of the world. You can localize your content by offering your website in different languages, changing messaging to connect with other cultures, and finding authors in different geographical areas to create content.
On RebelMouse, you can easily transform content into different languages with just a few clicks.
While it may seem like a lot of extra work, investing in localized content can increase traffic to your website from different regions, which in turn will boost your site’s engagement and foster a stronger connection with a variety of users.
Technical SEO
Google is the most popular website on the open web, and every content creator knows that it takes a lot to win the phrases that their audiences are searching for. Primarily, the ticket to any winning search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is creating quality, helpful content. But it takes a bit more than that these days to win the SEO game.
The prioritization of technical SEO has become more important as the content race continues on — and it makes sense. With Google’s massive control of web referral traffic, publishers and content creators need to make sure that their website is set up to easily grab the attention of Google’s crawler.
Google owns 84.9% of U.S. search engine referral traffic. From SparkToro.
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes actions you can take to optimize your website for efficient indexing by Google’s web crawlers. This includes fine-tuning your site’s performance, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, structure, and schema markup. If all of these technical aspects of a website are structured correctly, that tells Google’s crawler that your site is high quality — and that means higher rankings and more referral traffic from the web’s most important source. A good technical SEO strategy also improves user experience and makes it less likely for users to turn away from your site, which in turn will drive more conversions and secure growth for your business.
Click here to learn more about technical SEO.
Get Ahead of Content Creation Trends
If you were reading a list of content creation trends from several years ago, it would look totally different. There would likely be mentions of robust social media strategies and readable videos, and things like AI editorial tools and voice-friendly content would be nowhere to be found. Since the definition of what constitutes a successful digital strategy is always changing, so should your ability to embrace these industry shifts.
RebelMouse is a content management system (CMS) and creative agency that’s always anticipating these changes, often before they even fully take shape. Powered by AI, RebelMouse is poised to revolutionize your content strategy with an intuitive interface, intelligent editorial tools, and built-in solutions for technical SEO, personalization, and more.
Looking to engage new audiences through this year’s content trends? Request a demo today to check out how RebelMouse can help.
