2025 Content Trends
What should I be doing this year??
I’m back with my 2025 Content Trends update to help you stay ahead of the curve with your marketing activities. Importantly, I want to give you ideas to keep you interested and excited about your digital marketing activities. Plus, if you don’t feel that your marketing is working hard enough I hope this can inspire you to reflect and try something new.
In summary, I believe the key content trends to be aware are:
- Discoverability
- Effective and varied SEO techniques
- AI support
- Personalisation
- Doing more with less
Read on to find out more about these 5 key content trends to guide you in the coming year.
5 Content trends for 2025
I’ve listened to a couple of webinars and read a few articles about what the big marketing agencies are predicting will be important in 2025. Alongside my own intuition and knowledge of the current marketing best practices and platform changes, I’ve pulled together 5 content trends that I think are particularly useful to be aware of for small businesses.
1 – Discoverability is more important than ever
Discoverability is going to be a word you will hear a lot in 2025. It’s being driven by TikTok and our new habits when it comes to consuming content.
Specifically, it’s all about the way consumers will see your content – they will be shown something because an algorithm thinks that person wants to see it.
Hashtags are going out of fashion – so you won’t have ‘followers’ of these in a way we used to.
Discoverability will become more important than traditional loyalty or having specific followers that are shown or consciously look for your content. Instead, it’s about your content fitting the preferences of your ideal clients, and helping any algorithms to show it to them.
It’s also about being able to be found pretty much instantaneously when someone is interested in a product or service they need or are researching.
This means having a coherent omnipresence is also getting quite important, i.e. being consistent across more than one channel. However, it also means that cross-posting is not a bad thing and that can be a real time saver.
In short, your content needs to be really clear what its about and who it is for. And anything you can do to make it easy to be discovered (like optimisation for all forms of searches – see below) is key. If your ideal clients see your competitor’s content more or are easier to find than you, you may struggle.
2 – Effective SEO will get harder
I’m sorry about this one, but it’s really important that you are aware of how search is changing in 2025.
For many years, best practice guidance has been all about optimising your content for Google Search and ranking well on its results pages. However, now it is not just Google we need to consider.
AI generator searches are becoming more important (even Google has Gemini built in) and many people are using tools like ChatGPT just like we used to use search engines. In addition, people now search social media platforms for information and they use audio searches too, through smart speaker technology or their phones.
Visual search is also growing in popularity, with people taking photos of something to find out more about it or to purchase, e.g. Google Lens Search.
Finally, even if we stick with the basics of SEO, Google itself is fighting us to keep our audiences on their results page. They don’t want people going off to our websites.
Gemini (AI generated) summaries are given at the top of most results pages. Plus, there are maps, product carousels, and answers to common questions. Google is trying to do it all, so that their users can get all the information they need, but without clicking away from Google itself.
It’s not ideal because, of course, we want the traffic to our own websites, However, we should be mindful to ‘play along’ and try our best to get our content to be shown in Google’s own summaries, if possible. …and that is possible!
3 – AI is here to stay…so get educated
I’ve just mentioned AI, and I’m afraid if that sends a shiver down your spine, then it’s time to get over it, in 2025.
AI generated content (along with a whole host of other AI tools) is definitely here to stay. It will only grow in popularity and use.
If you haven’t already, in 2025, my top recommendation is to work out how you can use AI to help you. Consider which specific bits of your business it could benefit. Then, create your own policies about how AI will be used and what for.
If you are going to use AI for content creation and marketing, then my recommendation is that you are as transparent as possible. At the very least, have a clear record of what was created by AI and not you.
It is great for research and there are so many forms of AI which can complete specific tasks, so I hope it can help save you time or headspace, in the very least!
4 – Authentic personalisation will be a good investment
I know it can feel a little creepy when something personalised arrives. You’re not quite sure how a company knew a certain thing about you…or what you have been searching for…or even talking about!
However, our consumers are going to have higher and higher expectations when it comes to personalisation. It’s a key content trend for 2025. …and it’s one AI can help with too.
Personalisation does help build relationships. It can be done quite simply, but very effectively.
It may include segmenting your email list. Or sending more personalised direct messages (DM) or follow up calls. It often starts with having a very good customer relationship management (CRM) system. This means you can keep good records of clients, past customers and potential leads. Get to know your customers and their preferences. This includes not just for your services or products, but also the content they like and their preferred communication methods too. Send out a survey if you don’t have this info to hand.
It’s a great opportunity to then create more niche and direct content.
Create content that really appeals to more individuals directly…rather than a one size fits all approach.
5 – Do more with less…work smarter
Taking a bit of a negative view on the way 2024 has gone, there is chance that at the start of 2025 you may have to do ‘more with less’. Sadly, this may mean with less money and with fewer potential customers (because they have less money too).
However, I always love the phrase, “work smarter not harder”. I think this content trend for 2025 is in some ways my favourite.
It’s an invitation to think about how we do our marketing and to see what we can do to make life easier. Let’s find ways to get back as much time as possible to run our businesses and keep our customers happy.
Keeping the content trends in mind, I think it’s a good idea to really enhance every marketing platform you have in 2025. Update your profiles and bios. Polish your website. Consider your marketing emails and what more they could do for you. Adopt some AI support.
For content you have created this year, it’s a chance to reuse and repurpose as many of your assets as possible. Many social media channels are saturated. So, take what you have already posted before and publish it again. You can tweak it, make it better if you need it, but do as much as you can without having to constantly create new.
Focus on where your business needs you most.
Is following content trends important?
When you hear the term ‘content trends’ you may roll your eyes.
Remember it is a trend and it doesn’t mean you have to do everything completely differently in 2025. However, the best thing about being a small business is our agility. We can react and make small changes, which are really effective and happen to be on trend.
In addition, things like personalisation, adopting some AI support and reusing content, is much easier on a small scale. Let’s make the most of it.
Want some help with your content in 2025?
Please don’t get bogged down in trends, if you are already feeling overwhelmed.
Instead, look for support.
If you want help this year to plan your marketing, get content creation ideas and to be surrounded by fellow small business owners who get it, then come and join The Content Club for just £23 per month.
Not heard of this marketing membership? Book a chat today and I can tell you all about it. We can discuss the 2025 Content Trends in more detail too, if you would like!