Conversations around our office at this time of the year revolve around reviewing current content and inbound marketing strategies, how they’ve changed throughout the year, and where they’re headed in 2017.

While it’s easy to get excited about shiny, new tactics (we’ve all been guilty of this), we've noticed four trends that continually pop up during our discussions.

1. Video content is a must have

Somewhere along the line in 2016, video content became the standard for consumers. Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and co-founder, reiterated the importance of video during his keynote at INBOUND16. He stressed that video has moved from “nice to have” to “must have” for businesses.

While video content has been extremely effective for the larger brands over several years now, smaller businesses have also turned to video as part of their regular content marketing strategy.

If you haven’t made an effort to acquire the right tools and talent to produce video content for your website and social media channels, your business may get left behind the competition in 2017.

2. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are the next video

Have you seen all of the AR and VR commercials out there during the holidays this year? The price of technology to view AR and VR finally seems to be within reach for the common consumer.

What does that mean for businesses?

Depending on your industry, AR and VR hold the potential to immerse people in a world filled with your products or services. That’s certainly enticing for businesses that currently spend a lot of money on showrooms or extensive visual renderings.

Although AR and VR content may not be a reality for your business in the coming year, it is definitely something to keep an eye on as accessibility becomes more prevalent and price points for consumers and development of content drop.

3. Voice search may influence content

While voice search started as a feature on smartphones (i.e. personal assistants like Siri and Cortana), the move to standalone devices in our homes is intriguing.

Amazon’s Echo ("Alexa") and Google Home ("OK Google") are changing the way people find answers to common questions, order products, and consume content.

As content marketers, we need to be conscious of conversational voice-search and how Google’s algorithms may change as a result of the popularity of digital assistants.

4. Stay focused on inbound strategies

As we strive to produce relevant content for new mediums, we need to remain focused on how our content marketing efforts fit within our organization’s inbound strategy.

HubSpot’s 2016 State of Inbound report indicated that inbound organizations are four times as likely to view their marketing strategy as effective.

Moving into 2017, we’ll have exciting ways to create content on new mediums, but to gain maximum ROI, we need to remain strategic in our approach.

Our content, whether it’s traditional written copy, video, or even VR, should align with our buyer personas and their paths to purchase to achieve trackable results.

Are you excited to implement a new content marketing strategy for your organization next year, but you're having difficulty gaining buy-in from upper management? Make it easy for your executive team to say yes with these free tips!