Depending on your region of the world and the philosophy of your marketing leadership, some will see the logic in our forecasted “10 trends” more than others.

It is fair to say that for any brand that is marketing in multiple countries or in highly competitive verticals, this is not a list to ignore. For the travel and hospitality verticals this means more than staged pretty pictures, online travel reviews and paid SEO.

So, what is content marketing? The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines it quite well, with global application, as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

CMI serves many global brands and further shares on its website that content marketing “is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.”

After aggregating conversations and insights with our customers in the first six months of 2012, we arrived at the following content marketing trends, in no particular order, that will impact how businesses go about using content effectively through 2013 and beyond. As trends tend to go, something new will emerge, but we feel safe in saying that the list of 10 trends below would be a great list for any brand to master.

1. Re-emergence of experiential content
It used to be a buzzword, but now you will see the convergence of interactive marketing, gaming, and “gamification” in how content is deployed and used. The emphasis on stickiness of content through its entertainment, reward, and learning qualities will become more important and a competitive differentiator.

2. Tailored consumer content experience
Social networks are expanding faster than anyone can really quantify, and mobile is illuminating the problems of content-hopping and short attention spans. Watch for an exponential increase in demand for content that engages in near real-time with relevant content to keep the audience interested.

3. Alignment of mobile business and content strategy
The concept of “social, local, mobile” (SoLoMo) has come true in how consumers want content. With mobility advancements, your content will have to increasingly bridge these three essential content variables and tailor content to the end user’s needs.

4. Fusion of social media practices
Businesses will incorporate mobile architecture and social networks into their content approach to focus on the explicit needs of end user communities. Each sub-community of a brand will facilitate one another through social business interaction, connected by a shared interest and discussing potential need. Social media is now part of SEO as well—not a separate effort.

5. Newsjacking
Brands are generating their own news and are becoming their own publishers, and now the opportunities and techniques to insert your story into the news as it happens have arrived. The divide between interesting news (which needs to be the case for successful newsjacking) and marketing content or op-ed content is still alive and thriving, so proceed with caution.

6. Content curation bonanza
Having more and more content is critical, so curating content from partners, even competitors, will be necessary.

7. Micro-stories
To build trust and loyalty, brands will be uncovering smaller stories within their overarching story. While one buyer wants an eco-savvy product or service, another may want premium quality. If the same product or service can serve both audiences, they will need to find you, and will need micro-stories to relate their buyer persona to your brand. In the new media world, a 360-degree view of any company will reveal many facets for essential storytelling.

8. Video engagement
Move over, viral video—highly engaging, enlightening, and value-added video content is taking center stage. Video is growing in use and is still underestimated. More often it is used as a “commercial” or viral message that is disposable, but as video content continues to increase in use, it will have to be meaningful to the consumer.

9. Marketing spend shift
The balance of outbound marketing spend (bought media placement) will shift more to inbound spend (earned media, custom content) in shaping reputation and creating sales leads.

10. Create once, publish everywhere – again
This has been the mantra before in marketing circles. Now this means creating highly adaptable modular copy and image formats that can help make the expensive practice of winning content creation more efficient. Content management systems (CMS) will begin to adapt to this broader need, and marketing teams and budgets will too. Some new CMS offerings will emerge in 2013 that will help with multi-channel content management and deployment as well.

* Gordon Price Locke, who will be speaking at the WIT Conference, is President of D Custom, a content marketing and multimedia firm based in Dallas, Texas. D Custom was established in 2001 and serves global and regional brands with full service B2C and B2B content and brand marketing strategy development and all-channel custom content creation and distribution. Gordon can be reached at [email protected] or www.dcustom.com