In 2026, content marketing is still one of your most powerful tools for meeting your goals at all points in the customer journey, from discovery to customer retention and everything in between. The web, however, and how we use it, is changing. The platforms that mediate our online experience—social media and search engines—are pulling in one direction, and actual people who use the web are pulling in another.

The online experience is becoming less personal, less interactive, less user-driven, and less exploratory as platforms lock us into their ecosystems and replace communication and creation with consumption. As a result, average people are searching for more real, more meaningful connections with others online, whether that’s with friends and family or with the businesses that serve them. After all, the customer experience is a personal one, and customers become loyal not to products but to the people, the feelings, the values behind that product.

Effective content marketing in 2026 will have to deliver those personal, authentic stories that bring people together. The way to do that is through aligning your content marketing strategy with your overall business strategy and delivering content that brings customers into your brand’s story.

Search Engine Optimization in 2026

A big question going into 2025 was how AI would change the way we search, and, by extension, how that would affect content creation. We’ve seen the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, we’ve seen its mistakes, and we’ve seen how Google has responded. AI Overviews now contain links to sources, and sometimes, the AI Overview actually appears below links to websites, not above them. At the beginning of the year, it seemed as though Google was ready to destroy the search engine as we know it, but now, they seem more focused on figuring out where exactly AI fits into the experience of using Google.

What does this mean for SEO? For one thing, the fundamentals of EEAT remain in place. Our content should still demonstrate Expertise and Experience in a given subject, build Authority, and be a Trustworthy source of information. The difference as we head into 2026 is that rather than trying to capture broad keywords, content marketers will be looking to answer specific questions.

Blogs tend to turn up in AI Overviews links because they are often written by people with very specific, niche expertise. If you can anticipate common queries related to your business and write specific, helpful responses rooted in your expertise and experience with a particular problem, you could find your blog linked in an AI Overview.

It Still Starts With Strategy

Though the underlying technology is changing, the strategic foundations of marketing are the same. Marketing campaigns still have to flow from sound business strategy. Your strategy will determine your goals and how you will measure success. Marketing supports sales, so understanding your sales methodology is a part of developing a successful marketing strategy. It can seem a bit overwhelming, trying to see the big picture holistically like this, especially if you are a small business owner doing it all. Just take things one step at a time and you’ll get there. Here are some articles that can help.

• Develop a strategic roadmap
• Set SMART goals
• Determine the right metrics for measuring success
• Develop a sales framework

Which Type of Content Is Best?

The answer to that question depends on—you guessed it—your strategy and goals. You’ve got to know your unique selling point, who your customers are, what their problems are, and how you can solve them. There really is no “best” type of content marketing, merely a “best for you.”

A manufacturer or supplier might create more researched-backed content like case studies and white papers, while a health clinic might write blogs or create videos that answer medical questions common among the population it serves. If your ideal customer is on TikTok or Instagram, a campaign of short-form videos for those platforms can increase brand awareness if you know how to engage with those platforms. You don’t have to be on every platform or create every type of content. Focus on your goals and go where your customers are.

Social media will still be useful in 2026, but the danger of relying solely on social media campaigns is that you don’t own the platform. Platform owners can change the rules whenever they want, and you can suddenly see all of your hard-won engagement suddenly disappear. It’s important to convert social media engagement to something useful to you, such as mailing list subscribers or accounts registered on your own website, so that if that platform disappears, you don’t lose access to all of your followers.

Connection Through Storytelling

The “best for your business” content is about more than deciding between social media or blogs or videos. It’s about seeing the big picture: your strategic goals, your ideal customer, and your unique selling point, and communicating to your ideal customer the things that make you the best choice for them.

When you are creating content, whether it’s for B2B or B2C customers, you are not just transferring information from one brain to another; you are telling stories and building positive feelings about your brand. These stories aren’t just about your business and your products. In most sectors, everyone is selling similar products at similar prices. If these businesses are not sufficiently differentiated, then they’re telling the same story to the same people, and no one is breaking through. But if you know who you are, what you do well, and who you can do it best for, you can create the kind of content that connects.

The stories your customers want to hear are stories about themselves: their needs, their problems, the solutions they couldn’t find without your help. In B2B, these are stories about a business’s pain points. Whoever your ideal customer is, content marketing is about showing them that you know what they’re looking for and you know how to deliver it.

Let Us Help You Find Your (Brand) Voice

The keys to content marketing in 2026 is creating quality content that engages through storytelling, addresses specific questions, and aligns with strategy and your goals. If you feel overwhelmed and need a hand, we’ll work with you to develop a content marketing strategy aligned with your growth goals that brings out your brand voice and speaks your customers’ language.