How content strategies will shape up in the post Covid-19 world

Soham Majumdar

We grew up listening to adages such as “a pen is mightier than the sword” and “content is king.” In the post Covid-19 world as digitisation continues to permeate astutely across every possible sphere, the “king’s kingdom” will witness unprecedented expansion so to say; and strategic creation and placement of relevant, impactful and immersive content will transform the ever evolving business of communication.

It cannot be discounted that, in this day and age, effective communication is absolutely mission critical for every business, be it to create or consolidate brand reputation, to manage crisis or to promote a product or a service. All communication has at its core four key dimensions – the message, the creator of the message, the messenger and the recipient. The post Covid-19 era will see brand marketers, advertisers and consultants rethink of ways, revisit strategies and innovate integrated content approaches to reach where their consumer is.

The economic impact of the pandemic has already led many businesses to slash down their operational and marketing budgets. We have already witnessed the dwindling profit margins and revenue flux that the traditional print media has been facing off late. As a corollary, several brands will increasingly try out newer content formats, integrated mediums/ channels of content distribution to reach out to their relevant audience persuasively and more effectively, thereby bringing both democratisation of information and strategic placement of content to the fore. This effort would primarily be driven as a means to justify their marketing spends and generate greater revenue shares.

With the advent of multiple screens, be it the smartphone, the tablet and the laptop and multiple digital platforms and social media channels, consumer’s content consumption behaviour have been undergoing seismic shifts. Today’s young, urban, acutely time-crunched denizens prefer to consume short and precise, bite-sized, high impact streamed content on the device of their choice, whenever and from wherever. Consumers today absorb, interact and consume content at their terms, at their convenience and in their method. Therefore, content needs to be crisp, relevant and customised basis the medium – be it rich media, multi-media, blog, social media, etc while also ensuring that the essence and the messaging remains sacrosanct. Content marketing strategies therefore needs to be innovative, sublime, integrated and tailored for omni-channel distribution.

Additionally, as our world becomes more and more digitised, content formats will further evolve. Contemporary life is all about little escapes and since time has come to be one of the biggest luxuries today, platform agnostic content consumption has become the norm. People are logging on to the internet to consume news and information, entertainment, communication, education, shopping etc. Appointment viewing that the innocuous television once offered is slowly getting pushed back.

Talking about formals, digital revolution itself has brought with it myriad types – be it rich media chunks, webinars, podcasts, infographics, flyers, posters, brochures, white papers, etc. Further, big data and predictive analytics have made today’s brand managers, marketers and corporate communication specialists more focused and targeted when it comes to engineering content by analysing trends in consumers’ internet search patterns and social behaviour, thereby enabling them to serve innovative content in a more personalised manner, to their TG.

With online and digital era slated to flourish in the coming times, content strategy and allied ecosystems will further evolve at a blitzkrieg rate to become more and more dynamic and futuristic in essence and scope.

The author is a new-age content strategist