Two Can’t-Miss Content Marketing Trends

by PR Coach

A couple of new content marketing trends popped up last week and they’re fascinating to follow if your job is to create new and engaging content.

Whats a BlogShare?Heard about BlogShares?

Jay Baer highlights the first new blogging trend and coins a new buzzword in his post Did We Just Invent A New Form of Blogging?

We’ll be hearing much more about what he calls the “BlogShare.” It’s an exciting visual combination of blogging and Slideshare that puts words first but also looks great!

“The new type of presentation is essentially a written blog post or manifesto, delivered word-for-word in slides,” Baer says.

Not to mention pretty pictures and/or creative design.

Here are two examples he cites and which you must view to get the idea: Social Media Explorer’s The Lie of Content Marketing and Crap from Velocity Partners in the UK.

Two BlogShares I really like:  5 Japanese Aesthetic Ideas (Applied to Presentation Design) by Joe Gelman and Soap Presentations’ 8 Audience Profiles You Can Run Into in Presentations – a creative infographic-style deck.

I agree with Baer that Slideshare is one of the most underrated content forms. Owned by LinkedIn, the stats and features grow more impressive every day (hat tip to DNN):

  • 60 million monthly visitors
  • 130 million monthly pageviews
  • 10 million+ presentations already uploaded, making for a rich library of searchable, visual, often very high quality content
  • content uploads now include audio, infographics, video
  • infographics get 4x more likes than presentations and 23x more than documents
  • hyperlinks in slides are clickable and you can even link to an individual presentation slide
  • Slideshares are viral, engaging, easily shared on social media and simple to embed
  • many visitors are business users and thought leader presentations can attract tens of thousands of views within weeks.

Think of a BlogShare as visual blogging for business. It’s also the final nail in the coffin of PowerPoint.

Stay tuned as these hybrid presentations start to catch on in a big way. You should already be making plans to include BlogShares in your blogging and content marketing strategies.

World’s shortest cooking show on Instagram

Fish Tales on InstagramA 15-second cooking show? I’m not kidding!

We all admire and learn from the innovators creating viral video hits on YouTube, Vine and Instagram.

Sometimes a runaway hit, but most often these new video channels are a miss or a mess of cat memes and dog derring do.

That’s why this terrific post about the World’s shortest cooking show from Memeburn really caught my attention:

“By filming a cooking show in 15 seconds or less, Bart van Olphen has embraced the challenge presented by rapid fire social video and turned it into a popular Instagram account, which claims to be the world’s shortest cooking show. Fish Tales is a quick and quirky take on the genre, which sees van Olphen create (and eat) his dishes from scratch, as well as hand out some advice and tips for newbie chefs.”

It’s my second new blogging trend.

The Fish Tales “show” is fun, engaging and a great way to introduce and connect with viewers. van Olphen already has more than 13,300 Instagram followers and his new Facebook page is just starting to get attention too.

You’ve gotta admire the creativity! Look out Rachael Ray.

And the Oscar Award goes to… InstaVids

What's an InstaVid?As content producers, we’re all acutely aware of the importance of visuals. The example of the Instagram cooking shows takes “explainer” videos to a new and exciting level.

I think I’ll coin a phrase to describe them too. How about “InstaVids“? It has a great ring to it.

Imagine whole new season of “shows” on every topic? 15-second episodes of Downton Abbey or House of Cards? Well, that’s a little over the top but you get the idea.

Great potential if well done and InstaVids are easily within the most limited budgets.

The takeaway for these two content marketing trends is simple. Visuals matter. Hugely. Especially as mobile and multiscreen viewing continue growing by leaps and bounds.

I have to admit I’m now a convert to the power and potential of Instagram when it’s used creatively.

How about you? Are BlogShares and InstaVids part of your content marketing strategy in the near future? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on these and other video content and storytelling trends in the comments below.

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Author: Jeff Domansky

Visuals: PR Coach, Joe Gelman, Fish Tales



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