257: 2025 Content Marketing Trends for small business owners

New year. New trends. Who dis?

Let me share with you what I see to be the top content marketing trends of 2025. 

Welcome aboard flight CQM222, I am your pilot, Mariah - you have your ticket to good content marketing in hand. 

While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle

Each week you will be given a new stamp in your passport and by the end of the 90 days you will be on your way to explore the world of Content Marketing as a solo traveller.

This is week seven - get ready, it is going to be a wild ride!

If you LOVED this part of your trip (the episode), make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

⁠⁠⁠⁠GET YOUR TICKET TO GOOD CONTENT MARKETING⁠⁠⁠⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨The MAIN content marketing trends we will see in 2025 

✨How to use these trends 

✨How to decide which trend is right for your business 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is your pilot speaking. My name is Mariah and welcome to the special series of the Content Queen podcast. You have boarded flight CQM 222 and you have in your hand your ticket to good content marketing. We hope you have a safe journey on this 90 day trip. Strap in and get ready to experience all the strategy and learnings you need to enter 2025.

With a direction on how to create content that is unique to you and your business. While on board, you'll have complimentary access to all the learnings that will help you attract your new passengers to grow and expand your own trip. While on this flight, the flight attendants will be here to assist you get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom based lifestyle.

Each week you'll be given a new stamp on your passport and by the end of the 90 days, you'll be on your way to explore the world of content marketing as a solo traveler.  Seatbelts on, we're ready to take off. Hello, happy new year. I am on my own adventure in Vietnam and I'm delayed recording this podcast because as you can hear in my voice, I've been a little bit unwell.

And as I've learned from the amazing public speaking and voice coach Sally Prosser, who was on our podcast, in  2022, that we've got to rest the voice and I had to rest the voice. So anyway,  we're talking 2025 trends.  So I want to take you back to 2024  and the things that I noticed that worked for me in my business.

So reflection is really important in this step of understanding what you should do in 2025. So if you haven't reflected already,  So, um, if you're in the membership, if you're in content bootcamp, we have our quarterly workshop that we do, and that is coming up at the end of this month. So if you're listening and you're part of that, make sure you join.

We'll do it together.  But basically, I noticed that for me, posting less worked. So I used to post every day. It just became a habit. you know,  easy for me to do routine. But I got to the point where I was like, okay, I want to really maximize what I do. So let's post less and see if there's an impact. And there wasn't.

So, and in terms of a bad impact, if anything, there was a really good impact. So posting less was definitely one of the things that I learned. Shorter podcast episodes definitely worked out for me a lot better for the solo episode. So I started posting. More shorter bite sized podcast episodes for you guys when it's just a solo, when it's a, you know, an interview at that dynamic is, um,  I find is, you know, obviously it's going to go a bit longer and then sharing the dynamic between Mitch and I.

Um, and I feel like it allowed me to show you behind the scenes into what we do as a team. Obviously, we're a partnership in more than one way.  And sharing our relationship was one of the things that we did as well. But sharing our dynamic as a team is really important because when people work with Content Queen, even if it is in the capacity of  strategy session or in the capacity of content bootcamp.

The dynamic between Mitch and I is really important to share because he's a big part of content queen and he does knows and does a lot of things that I don't. So it allows us to strengthen that business and I thought sharing that dynamic was really important.  So there were a few things that I noticed in 2024 that has allowed me to create the plan for 2025.

I'm still working on it. I always give myself a little bit of breathing room coming into the new year to reflect, unwind, and then hit the ground running in like the end of Jan. So this could be your permission to give yourself some space as well to really learn what's working. I think 2024 was an interesting year for me in general, from like a business perspective.

Content Queen grew a lot different than I thought it would. Um, my focus was really on. Just kind of, yeah, the travel, the balance, all that. And we were inundated with inquiries for support in our retainer business. So  I couldn't ignore that urge to grow content queen. So I took it and obviously we're coming into 2025 with a different vision and.

I'm really excited for it. I'm really excited for what it's going to create. And opportunities are still coming even in the break and as we hit the ground running in this first week back. So sometimes, you know, you've got to focus, but the universe or whoever you believe in, um, you always be redirected.

And sometimes it's just like, let's go with it and see what happens. But we still did travel.  We still did all the things that we wanted, but I grew a lot in my mindset. I had a period of time where I felt like my mindset was really holding me back and I focused on that a lot. And I found that that was really a big key to me moving forward in my business.

And that's when content cream grew was when I worked on that mindset. And that's why in this around the world in 90 days, I had a mindset piece. in this podcast series because I thought it was really important for us to think about in 2024 and going into 2025. And that's something that I'm really going to focus on as well.

This year is that big mindset piece and continuing to grow and strengthen my mindset because I do see the results when I focus on it. And that's like focusing on self, right? As well. Anyway, we're talking 2025 trends today, so let's get into it. So when you,  work out what those best trends are to try in your business.

Then you test them, you measure them and you see what works for you. These trends, it doesn't mean you have to do anything. It doesn't mean you have to focus on them. You could just be aware of them. Some things are just definitely not going away. And I encourage you to think about what this looks like for your business, but integrate it in the way that works for you.

That's why, if you have a content strategy, you're You're going to know exactly what you need to do. You're going to go, yep, I'm already doing that. Or, Ooh, that's something to think about. If you don't have one, you're going to be like, Oh, shiny object. Let me try this shiny object. Let me try that. And you're going to be overwhelmed.

So if you don't have a strategy that should be your focus for this month, at least, and see where that takes you with these trends.  So the first one is SEO  with voice. So  social media trends are really driven by like user behavior.  And obviously we're very time poor  and now we're trying to find the best information on the channels that we have.

Provided. Some of us are even using voice activation to find out our answers, Siri, Google home, Alexa, things like that. So SEO  in social media was a big thing for 2024. We knew that we had to continue to put in key words in SQG. What we're talking about, even what we're saying, but now there's this next level with voice.

So people are going to be searching using their voice. So think about what people say and how they use those common phrases when they say, Hey Siri,  what content trends should I try this year? But there might be a more casual tone. So when you are creating video or content,  think about those words in that casual language that people are going to be using to find what they need.

You know, I even, when I type now, I'm in such a rush, I type so quickly. I always make spelling mistakes because like, you know, your fingers are kind of trying to type all the things, you're just writing it really quickly. So with voice activation, obviously we're going to be saying the words clearly, but I might not say the words in how it's comes up in search in terms of, you know, if I was to type, I might write it in a very different way than when I would say it.

So think about that when you are creating content.  How would people be searching this if they were to voice it?  You know, how can we simplify this? How can we have, you know, text on the screen? How can we use the captions to really pick up those keywords that people would be searching in text and in voice?

It's a really interesting thing to think about. Okay, the second one is probably My favorite  now in 2024, 2023, 2022, we talked a lot about user generated content, getting our users to create content for us.  Right. So we can show the experience. What happens now is a lot of users are getting paid to show their experience.

So is that authentic? We don't know. We know testimonials are authentic. We know, you know, um, non paid collaborations are authentic. Those are the ones we really want to use as much as possible. Of course, influencer marketing, user generated content from the paid side. Still great, but  you know, maybe thinking about leaning towards more of the opportunities that are.

Authentic and unique,  but what about EGC?  We saw a big spike in this in 2024, it is employee generated content. So you might be going, well, what if I met just a team of me? Well, great, because this is going to be so much easier for you.  Sharing behind the scenes. employee generated content. You know, we saw, um, years ago on TikTok, a guy works in an ice cream store and he just shares him making the desserts and he does voiceover.

Everyone loves it. We're seeing big influencers that are creating their own brands doing this. You know, they've got their, um,  maybe they make their brand as a family. There's a big influence in Australia called Kat Clark. She has a skincare brand called Collate. Her and her family have created this brand and they do a lot of trends, TikToks.

Of course, they were influencers before, so they already had a big following, but we're seeing even corporate companies, you know, their social media managers being the face behind the brand. I saw this experience with one of my own clients. I do content. Um, we have a client that has a seafood shop in Bribie Island.

I went up there, filmed content. I was like, all right, I'll be in it. Because, um, and we had some of the staff, but the, the owner and the founder didn't want to be in, in the content. So I started being in the content. I was the social media manager. So I am the, the example of EGC. That content has performed exceptionally well.

There's even been things where I have tried an oyster and in the caption, I've said, you know, social media manager, blind chai's our oysters. Um, I did the unpacking. We had a very viral 1 million view video, thousands of followers. from me unpacking my order as I was going to take content with it.  So thinking about how you can bring yourself into using your own products, if you're a product based business, using your own service, if you're a service, you know, if you do have some freelancers, if you have your partner that works with you,  can you bring them into the content, bring them in a little bit more?

I did a little bit of it, obviously, as I mentioned with Mitch and I, but I'm going to be thinking about how we can be more behind the scenes, you know, I'm going to be sharing more of our,  behind the scenes of being digital nomads. Um,  you know, how we put together  things, trends, you know, there's all these things that you can do with you and your team.

If you have a team, if you don't, you are your team. Can you talk a little bit more about yourself, about your journey? This is where we can get into more of the personal stuff. Um, as I said, there's a difference between personal life and private life, but you can go towards, you know, more of the personal stuff, like, What foods you like and things you like doing.

What do you eat on your lunch break? Like you can really go into this, like really relatable behind the scenes.  Um, You can do some trends with if you even have, um, some freelancers, you know, you can do stuff like, what do we all have for lunch? I've even seen, um, friends do this where what they do is they'll split their screen and one of them is a bar manager.

The other one is a social media manager. And they'll do their day to day and they'll do photos. So what's that person doing at 5am versus that person? You could do that. If you have an international team, what does our days look like? And share that you could do so many different things about bringing in employee generated content.

But if it is just you think about how you could put yourself in front of the camera a little bit more. Now, I want to go into the things that. we have seen last year that we're still going to see this year. So there's two things that I want to cover in this one. This is unfiltered, unpolished content that is still going to be seen.

So we saw the rise of, you know, Gen Z type content, very unpolished, but this kind of aesthetic that is unpolished. So we're going to still see that unpolished aesthetic. Of course, if you're a brand and you've got branding, you want to make sure your brand is still there, but don't get so caught up in it being unpolished.

Extremely edited, extremely engineered content. We're going to see even videos be less polished. Uh, Corey Walker in the last episode of the year talking about Instagram talked about this. You know, we don't need this really, really polished over edited content anymore.  We just want the content. We want to be entertained.

We want to be educated. We want to be given value. Just give it to us.  And the other one which I mentioned was  quality over quantity. So posting every day to say, I'm going to show up every day is not a strategy. posting consistently with quality is. And when I say quality, I don't mean the over polished content.

It just means really thinking about what you are delivering to your audience rather than just like, okay, I need to get something up. Let's just get something up and post every day. It's like, okay, if I cut back my posting, how can I make it of value? So pairing those two together, it's kind of like,  this is what we're going to see from last year into this year  under not over polished over.

engineered content, but quality content that isn't  all the time posting every day. It is just, how can I give the most value, but it doesn't have to look this aesthetic all the time. But if we go into the next thing, which is number five, is this concept of ugly content.  This is a trend that came out towards the end of this year that we're going to see into Sorry, the end of 2025, ugly content.

I call it authentic content, but we are seeing, if you look at your ads that you're getting delivered now, people are using old school word art that was Windows and, and Microsoft back in the nineties and early two thousands, we're seeing, um, you know, things drawn hand drawn. We're seeing this kind of ugly aesthetic, which I think is that really raw, really authentic.

So when we say aesthetics.  And that polished content is kind of out what we're seeing come in is this ugly content. Keeping it raw, keeping it authentic, getting things up, not worrying about how it looks, worrying about how the audience takes it. So even ugly content, you know, people drawing things in the sand at the beach, like 20 percent off.

I saw a brand do their kind of, um, you know, launch of their, um, Boxing Day and Black Friday sales. It was just like, here's a  piece of content I made on Canva in 10 seconds. Where even there's a girl on TikTok who got famous redoing logos for big brands. And did them horribly, like she did them on paint and coloured them in.

And this is like ugly content. Everyone loved it, it was very engaging. Big brands were paying her a lot of money to redo their logo for 10 seconds. For them to, you know, be part of that content. It's this ugly content. So it's about thinking less polished, more authentic, more raw.  Now the next one is  TikTok on Instagram.

So on TikTok, and there's, I've talked about this with how I feel like maybe the algorithm is going to go, but thinking about live energy on TikTok.  So TikTok,  when you go live on TikTok, if you're not aware, it's not going live for 10 minutes and talking about, um, your, your certain topic and you're very focused.

It's like you're just, it's like you're doing a mini podcast.  TikTok live is literally hitting live and doing whatever you were doing in that moment and just being live while you do it and engage with your followers at the same time.  People do this for live selling, people do this to get people to buy their products.

So I think the way TikTok  is presented It's going to reflect on Instagram. So going live might be, might look like going live for an hour  and just talking with your audience,  sharing what you're doing at the same time. So it's gonna, it could be, now these are my predictions. It could be less about going live to share what you want to share and get off in nine minutes.

It could be going live for like up to an hour, just talking with your audience.  Now, this would mean that the live algorithm on Instagram would have to change. It would mean that your lives would have to go to more than just your audience. So I'm not saying do this now,  but just be curious if you do consume TikTok, be curious about how there could be some things that you could bring over to your Instagram.

Because the way TikTok and people consume TikTok. is very engaging. They're a very engaged audience and Instagram at the moment is not. So  there's things like live selling. The algorithm on Tik TOK is very different. You delivered content from people you don't necessarily follow. You delivered a lot, you delivered lives.

So I would be very interested to see. And I, my prediction is that Instagram will follow TikTok. We're going to have longer lives. We're going to have, you know, live selling where we're just going live for an hour, talking about our products and services and just engaging with our audience. We could see an algorithm change.

It's just my prediction. Let's see what happens with that. I will be super curious. Okay, I've got two more. One of them is about sub communities. So these are private communities. You know, we see that with private Facebook, uh, and people use Snapchat now. We've got close friends. We've got broadcast channels.

This is going to still be very interesting and it's going to grow a lot more, but start thinking about growing your own community,  growing your people rather than just always hard sell, hard sell, hard sell. How can you create content that is here to just build a community, get people to comment, share, engage, don't be selling at them all the time or getting them to always go to your website.

Be thinking about how you can get them to just keep coming back to your content. Maybe you create a small community, maybe it's a DM group, maybe it's whatever it is, you know, we've got WhatsApp chats,  but sub communities are going to be very important. So how can you bring people into a community on the platform that you're using?

It might just be that you get them to follow you.  And you get them to just continue to comment and engage, but think about potentially how you could create your own community on these channels that you're using, because they are going to continue to rise. People want more of this.  intimate, they want to feel like they're part of something.

That's why the comment sections in TikTok is massive. Because people want to feel part of something. How can you make them feel part of your content? How can you create content that's less about always selling and more about building a bit of a community? A bit of a people around you that always love what you do, follow, it's creating fans, right?

And then you could think about creating that group where you bring them together.  The travel space do it really well. They create WhatsApp groups that people can come in and like chitty chat. You know, we saw that, that, that was what, how Facebook groups started.  If you've wanted to create a group or a community, this is the year to think about what that looks like for you and how you bring them into, you know, what mighty networks there's so many community groups, but think about the channel that you really love  and could you create one in there, how can you bring these people together?

So that they can get more from you in like a private setting. It could even just have close friends on Instagram where you just deliver private stories to them.  But think about it. If you want to create a community, now's the time to think about it. And then your content or the call to action of your content is really about getting these people into this group.

Then once they're in that group, you can do what you will with them. Obviously you want them on your email list so you can sell some a little bit more, but  community is going to be a  And the last one is AI, you know, we have to talk about AI, how can we not?  But AI is going to be interesting because lots of people are actually going to be using AI to replicate people.

So will we be able to tell the difference? There's going to be AI and there's going to be humans.  So, how can you do stuff that AI can't?  Like, human stuff will shine in an area where AI won't. So whilst, you know, we can't ignore AI, we want to keep using AI, and we want to use it to help us be productive and do all the things.

If people are gonna, like, people have been creating videos, and it looks like it's Kim Kardashian saying that, they can replicate Kim Kardashian's voice. They can, there's an app now that will do the talking to camera for you, right? So you don't have to do it, but it will be you.  So think about, okay, if everyone's using AI, well now actually platforms, you have to tag if you've used AI, like TikTok, especially, um, I'm not sure about Instagram, but  how can you then do things that AI can't?

So, you know, for example, if you're an artist,  what kind of art do you create that AI can't? If you're in the coaching space, you know, what can AI not do and use your ability to out shine AI and create content in that space because people are going to be using AI for their graphics, their everything, their writing, their even potentially being them on camera.

So what can you do to outshine AI because we don't want to add to the noise and now people are struggling to know what is real. So what can you create that will make your stuff real as opposed to all the AI stuff we're seeing because we don't want to add to the noise. And yeah, okay, we want to use AI to help us along the journey, but if you're going to keep adding to the noise, with more AI generated stuff.

Think about what you can do that's engaging, appealing, unique, that AI can't. Storytelling is a big one. You know, AI isn't going to necessarily know stories that you know about yourself. That really like  casual conversation, you know, if you're going to do a piece to camera using AI, it's going to look, it's going to be a bit more robotic, but if you can film stuff, it's very, you know,  for example, we're thinking about ugly content, you know, selfie type talk to camera stuff, have your phone on the table, just talk over, you know, you can do things that AI won't be able to cause AI is going to look a lot more polished.

So think about how you can outshine AI. And of course, you can then use it for other areas of your business to make your life easier, but lots of people are going to be using it. They're going to potentially be them in AI form. So to stand out, you kind of don't want to add to the AI noise. You want to sort of use it where you can to make your life easier and then be smart about, because the novelty is going to wear off, right?

We're going to be like, Oh, cool. That's AI. That's someone talking AI. And then. We're gonna be over it. Oh my god. I'm sick of seeing. It's like when trends came out and everyone was doing lip syncing, you know, after a while, you're sick of seeing that. You've got to always be doing, you know, you want to try it, see what works.

But then you always want to be doing things that's gonna help you stand out and be unique.  So they're my trends for this year. So we've got, just to recap,  SEO, even for voice, how people would be saying the words. EGC, employee generated content, how your brand will look and quality over quantity, so that unpolished, uh, unedited, but also being of value.

TikToks.  How TikTok looks now, how is that going to implement onto other social channels? Instagram, Facebook, how we go live, how we sell, how we use our algorithm, community groups, and being able to foster a community is going to be really important. Ugly content was one of them that I missed, you know, this really authentic, raw content.

And AI!  How can we outshine AI this year and use it for good, but also  be us, and be authentic and raw.  So be a content queen or king, and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining me on this flight, the first flight of 2025, stamp your passport and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends.

You can do this by adding it to your Insta stories and tagging me at contentqueenmariah, or just tell them about it. If you do rate and review on whatever platform you listen to, someone that does help me get my message out there. And of course, it allows us to get amazing guests on. Follow me on Instagram or TikTok.

Thank you for bearing with me and my voice. It'll be better next week. And I'll talk to you soon. We have heaps of amazing content coming up in 2025. I can't wait to share a little bit more about what we're going to be doing this year. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment