The copywriting and content marketing trends worth your attention in 2026: video, brand trust, AI content generation, voice search, podcasts, user generated content, long-form content, content communities, updating old posts, and restrained pop-ups. Each one below explains what it means for your writing. Where we quote a figure, we date it, so you can judge how current it is.
Plenty of “trend” lists recycle things that became industry norms years ago. These ten are the ones still shaping how copy gets planned, written and published.
01. Video Marketing
Video work belongs in your skill set. Video is no longer a niche format, with businesses across almost every industry putting it on landing pages to reach audiences that are becoming more visually motivated every year.
Video is a primary form of content consumed on the internet, and is used constantly to engage and educate audiences on a global scale. Product demos, Q&A sessions and explainers are the go-to choice for everyone from start-ups to multinationals. Brush up on your video script-writing and planning skills, because this one is not going away.
Cisco’s Visual Networking Index forecast, published in 2017, set out how fast this was coming:
“Globally, IP video traffic will grow 3-fold from 2016 to 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 26%. Globally, IP video traffic will reach 227.6 Exabytes per month in 2021, up from 70.3 Exabytes per month in 2016. Globally, IP video will be 82% of all IP traffic in 2021, up from 73% in 2016.” – Cisco
02. Brand Value and Awareness
Building the value and awareness of the brand you represent is imperative, or you may become lost in the sea of mediocrity instead of making waves yourself. Competing for a primary place in your industry has become more cutthroat with every passing year. Coasting along no longer suffices – targeting ways of building your brand’s value, conscience and presence will keep you ahead.
Incorporating positivity, humour, warmth, hope and care into your copy and aligning these emotional triggers with your brand will help to humanise it. Being aware of social norms and targeting these to stand out from the crowd in a productive manner will highlight your brand value and make your audiences more aware of your presence. Be sure that your brand can back up everything you’re saying, though. Authenticity and trust matter more than positive branding, and they matter more now that so much published content is machine-assisted.
03. AI Content Generation
Artificial Intelligence has moved from trend to infrastructure. Back in 2021, Semrush reported that 86% of CEOs said AI was mainstream technology in their offices. Since OpenAI released GPT-3 in 2020, the autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text, generating copy with a model has become an everyday part of content workflows, through AI content generators like ContentBot.
The reasons are unchanged. It saves time and increases productivity, and it lets you generate both long form content and short form copy, ready for easy editing, for use on blogs, social media, websites and emails. The features in AI content generators take the pressure off a copywriter or content marketer, most notably writer’s block. The old fear that AI would replace human writers has settled into something more useful: it is a tool that removes the grunt work, while the judgement, editing and original thinking stay with you.
04. Voice Search
Assistants like Amazon‘s “Alexa” and Apple‘s “Siri” trained people to search by speaking, and 2021 estimates already put the share of voice searches above 30% of all web searches. Google Voice Search works on desktop and mobile. The SEO copywriting lesson holds: write for the way people ask questions out loud. Where you might once have optimised for “best time to go fishing”, you may be better suited to “when is the best time to go fishing?” Conversational phrasing also lines up with how AI search assistants read and summarise pages, so using natural question phrases in copy does double duty.
05. Podcasts
Podcasting scaled fast and stayed. In late 2020 active podcasts were estimated at over 1.5 million, compared with a little over 500 000 in 2018, and by 2021 Apple Podcasts listed more than 47 million episodes. According to The Infinite Dial 2021 Digital Media Survey from edisonresearch.com, 41% of the US population over the age of twelve listened to at least one podcast a month, up from 37% in 2020. What does that mean for the copywriting industry?
As audio and video content grows, refine your skills to match. Writing is no longer only about the page, but it has not taken a back seat either: every video needs a script and podcasts are no different. Podcasters rely on the creativity and persuasive writing of copywriters and content marketers so their voices are literally and figuratively heard. Show notes, trailers and episode descriptions are copy jobs too. You won’t regret adding podcast writing to your portfolio if you haven’t already.
06. User Generated Content (UGC)
More businesses lean on User Generated Content every year. Whether it is customer testimonials and reviews, interviews, polls and surveys, or incentives that ask for user images, videos or other inputs, the aim is to use UGC because it improves conversions.
As a copywriter, work out how UGC can strengthen your copy and content marketing. Audiences trust other consumers and often base buying decisions on them. Gimmicks and sales pitches don’t convert the way they once did, and when readers suspect a page was churned out by a machine, real customer voices are what separate you. Give your audience more feedback from their peers.
07. Long-Form Content
Long-form content still earns its place. In a world dominated by short social video you’d expect the opposite, but depth is what readers reward when they are choosing what to trust. People want value, and they want to see the purpose and identity of a brand. The more authentic and useful the content, the more persuasive it is. Research, planning, honesty, creativity and inspiration are what make the difference.
Long-form has structural benefits too. It attracts more links and backlinks: Backlinko‘s study found long-form articles get an average of 77.2% more links than short articles. Links remain central to rankings and traffic, so go long where the topic deserves it.
08. Content Communities
Content communities have been around for years, but businesses now use them in a far more targeted way. A transparent community that encourages dialogue between a business and its audience benefits both sides. The business gets inexpensive feedback, can tweak a product and watch the response. Positive reviews and comments give the marketing team promotional material. In return, the audience gets the opportunity to speak to developers and marketers in open forum, with specific answers to their questions or problems.
For copywriters and content marketers, communities are a direct line for user research: real language, real objections, and a read on demographics, locations and reactions. They are also where you find opinions no model can generate for you. Go and learn more about the most important people to you professionally – your potential customers.
09. Updated Content
“By updating old content, you can get Google to crawl your site more frequently without needing to publish more often. The more Google crawls your site, the more likely your most recent information will show up in search results after publishing, which gives you an advantage in your search engine results rankings.” – Neil Patel
How often do you update your older content? Orbit Media’s surveys tracked the shift: 53% of bloggers updated old posts in 2017, rising to 70% making changes as part of their content strategy by 2020. Refreshing posts improves visibility in search and keeps older work earning. Fix outdated figures, date your statistics, add what has changed, and cut what is no longer true. Andy Crestodina put the case simply:
“Bloggers who go back and update old content are more than twice as likely to report “strong results.” They may have come to the same realization we did: you don’t need 1000 articles. You need 100 great articles.”
10. Limit Pop-ups
Welcome gates, pop-ups and slide-ins work when used correctly, and the figures support it. Some websites have reported conversion increases of up to 2100% after adding them, so it is hard to argue against use. The problem is overuse, which triggers an immediate “fight or flight” response. “Fight” because closing endless pop-ups makes your blood boil, “flight” because leaving is easier than persevering. Both outcomes hurt the product or service you are promoting.
The current approach is restraint and better timing, so the message lands without the backlash. Settings let you decide when a pop-up appears, by scroll depth or time on page. A delay gives the visitor a calmer experience. If the copy on the page is good, nobody minds the odd pop-up, but being accosted repeatedly annoys even patient visitors. Make sure the copy inside the pop-up is worth the interruption. Experiment, listen to feedback, and check it on mobile.
Summary
Plenty of other things get called “trending” when they have been industry standards for years. Research is one of them. The 10 top copywriting and content marketing trends in 2026 above are the ones that keep growing and keep changing how copywriters and content marketers work. Several of the figures we quoted date from 2020 and 2021, and we have said so where that is the case. Keep trendy.
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