Recently, the Content Marketing Institute published a compilation of content marketing experts' predictions for the content marketing industry in 2015. Nine content marketers offered their thoughts on the future of content marketing, but most responses focused on two things: quality and analytics.Let's take a closer look at some of their predictions (you can follow the link to read all of the details about their 2015 content marketing predictions).

Quality and Content Marketing in 2015

Kirsten Knipp, Marketing Director at Hubspot, says, "I foresee a continued focus on quality. Over the last five years, marketers have figured out that content is the core engine that drives search on the web. But as more companies become publishers, there's a real need to ratchet back that volume and increase quality."Bill Flitter, CEO and Founder of Dlvr.it, says, "What's next? Filtering the noise. Remember, noise is relative. Noise is just a lack of relevance. How do we connect the consumers to relevant content and answer their questions? Right now, the push is all about creating content, but is all that content being created really addressing your customers? Are your customers discovering what they need, when the need it?"David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist and blogger at WebInkNow.com (syndicated through Newstex Authoritative Content) predicts the future of content marketing is about, "Real time. It's about instant."Mark Chatow, Vice President of Marketing for Servio, says, "What we are seeing now is content post-Google Panda. Panda put into black and white that content has to change. It's not about throwing anything you can on your site. You need to create content that's engaging and unique, and ultimately shareable and linkable."I refer to that "shareable and linkable" content as "shareworthy content" in my book, Content Marketing for Dummies. This is the high quality content that authoritative publishers create. It's the type of content that adds value to the audience's lives and makes them want to talk about it and share it with their own audiences. It's this sharing that helps build brand awareness, recognition, loyalty, and advocacy, and that's where the long-term power of content marketing comes from.

Analytics and Content Marketing in 2015

Stan Woods, Managing Director of Velocity Partners, says of content marketing in 2015: "The content marketing ninja of 2012 and beyond is someone who knows what great is, but also understands through analytics how to measure and optimize it."Kirsten Knipp, Marketing Director of Hubspot, says, "Marketers need to become more analytical. More and more marketers need to go back to Excel 101 and Testing 101. They need to refine their ability to look at data, extract what matters and 'pivot table' it."April Dunford, Vice President of Marketing for Huawei Enterprise, says, "There is an ever-increasing focus on measurement and monitoring to ensure that we are tying results back to our business objectives (and more specifically, revenue). I hope that this will help us get away from producing crappy 'click-bait' that might drive short-term traffic and eyeballs but doesn't result in revenue."Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, Inc., says, "We have to become more accountable about how we measure things."

Other Content Marketing 2015 Predictions

A few other topics were mentioned in the predictions for content marketing in 2015. Mobile and video will play important roles in content marketing in the coming years. As Rebecca Lieb, Digital Marketing and Media Analyst at The Altimeter Group, says, "Mobile is fast becoming a critical channel."I was happy to see that integration was the other hot topic in the 2015 content marketing predictions. The best marketing plan is a fully-integrated plan and that includes content marketing strategies and tactics.Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, Inc. discusses integration from a different perspective -- she sees the need for integration of content marketing activities. She says, "Today marketers look at their activities in a compartmentalized fashion. Lead nurturing is over here. Blogging there. E-book over there. All these things are considered in pieces. Marketers need to figure out how to integrate everything into a cohesive whole rather than focusing on 'this marketing campaign' or 'that webinar.'"What do you think of these content marketing predictions? Is your content plan ready to leverage upcoming trends?Image: Hilde Vanstraelen