As companies look to the future and strategize how to expand audiences for their content, they face some significant challenges. They must determine how best to create and manage rapidly increasing volumes of content, while at the same time delivering that content in context to an ever-widening variety of consumers.
While the format of the content will be a mix of traditional and brand-new types, target audiences will range in size from millions of consumers down to very specific groups and even individual customers. Emerging technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, machine learning and behavioral analytics, stand ready to help companies take advantage of these multi-channel content publishing opportunities.
Begin Piloting New Technologies
How can companies best prepare for the broadening array of targeted content they will likely have to deliver in the next five to 10 years? Start experimenting with emerging technologies now. In that way, you can gain insight early on about what works well (and what doesn’t) in appealing to the current and future audiences for your content.
For instance, if you’ve already attracted a loyal audience for video content, it’s time to explore how your company might effectively use augmented, mixed and/or virtual reality to help provide consumers with even more immersive content experiences.
Companies may also want to consider the use of facial recognition software to help in automating the classification and retrieval of images. Increasingly, the visual component of each and every piece of content is becoming as important as the text, whether it’s a photo, a composite image, an infographic, a video or all of those image types.
Strike a Balance on Content Personalization
Through use of increasingly sophisticated content intelligence — a combination of technologies including machine learning, behavioral, marketing and predictive analytics and sentiment analysis — companies can more accurately gauge the effectiveness of content and then tailor it to specific groups or individuals.
Greater personalization of content comes with its own issues too, particularly around privacy. Companies will need to continue to walk the line between mining the personal data a consumer opts to share while not giving that individual the sense that they’re being specifically targeted.
