Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Over the past three decades America has left the rest of the rich world in the dust. In 1990 it accounted for about two-fifths of the GDP of the G7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. Lately, China too has gone backwards. Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal gdp has slipped from about three-quarters of America’s in 2021 to two-thirds today.

This record is now in jeopardy. As America has become more partisan, both Kamala Harris and Mr Trump, the two presidential candidates, are focusing on policies that protect their own supporters, rather than expanding the overall economic pie. America is not about to lose its economic dominance. But, sooner or later, rotten politics will start to exact a heavy price, and by then it will be hard to reverse course.

To see why, consider first the factors behind America’s success. Innate advantages play an important role. America is a big country blessed with vast energy resources. The enormous size of its consumer and capital markets means that a good idea dreamt up in Michigan can make it big across America’s 49 other states.  Yet good policy has been important, too. 

This combination of factors has fuelled a powerful virtuous cycle. America’s dynamic private sector draws in immigrants, ideas and investment, begetting more dynamism. It is home not just to the world’s biggest rocket-launch industry, but also its internet giants and best artificial-intelligence startups. Its seven big tech firms are together worth more than the stockmarkets of Britain, Canada, Germany and Japan combined; Amazon alone spends more on research and development than all of British business. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, meanwhile, investors have a keen appetite for American debt. 

So far, America’s worsening politics have had little visible effect on the economy.   The turning-point may not come tomorrow, or even in the next four years. But with every mistake that politicians make, it draws another step closer.

For most of the 21st century, economists and neighboring countries have looked to Germany with admiration and envy as it managed to weather economic storms with relative ease, capitalizing on trade with growing economies and expanding the power of its industrial giants in the process.

However, a shifting world order has pulled the carpet out from underneath Germany. The industrial quirks that once helped it outgrow its European peers are fast becoming a burden, and crisis after crisis has exposed a lack of planning at the top of government.

As the Fortune 500 Europe shows Germany yet again dominating the list of Europe’s biggest companies, many are left with a difficult question: What is going wrong in Germany?  However, any reader of the list with even a cursory knowledge of the European economic landscape will view the figures with skepticism, with the Fortune 500 Europe measuring companies’ revenues from 2023. That’s because Germany, and the companies that drive its economic engine, are in peril.  The country’s government expects the German economy to contract by 0.2% in 2024, following a 0.3% decline in 2023. The economic pinch was felt in German companies’ top line last year. 

Germany’s challenges span the structural and cyclical, domestic and geopolitical, creating a perfect storm for the country’s economy that few economists see little way out of in the short run.  Red signals are flashing all over the country’s economic indicators. Exports to its main trading partner, China, have fallen, while energy imports following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have tanked.

Understanding the scale of Germany’s challenges requires a careful look at its strengths, or more appropriately, how it built them.  Manufacturing makes up 18.4% of Germany’s economy. For context, neighboring France’s share is 9.5%, while the U.K.’s is 8.4%. Most economies move away from manufacturing as they mature, but Germany has been an outlier—defying that trend to great economic success.  Around half of Germany’s GDP is drawn from exports, well above other European nations. In the century’s first 20 years of global expansion, that has proved a gold mine for Germany.  However, exports from Germany have shrunk since, owing to weakening consumer sentiment in China and the rise of homegrown Chinese rivals.  Protectionism is also on the rise, with the U.S. and China engaging in tit-for-tat tariffs that have spilled over into Europe.  Then there’s the question of how Germany powers its increasingly exposed manufacturing sector.  Fueled by Russian gas, the cost of doing business skyrocketed in Germany after the West slapped sanctions on Russian energy.  The result has been a manufacturing sector stuck in recession for more than two and a half years.

The problem for Germany is that it doesn’t have a competitive advantage in other high-value sectors, for example, something comparable to the U.K.’s strong financial sector. Ditto for any kind of burgeoning tech sector.  At the same time as it tackles structural issues in its economy, Germany is also facing the existential pressure of a shrinking working-age population.

There are few easy options for Germany to climb out of its structural and cyclical holes and hold on to its spot as Europe’s biggest economy. Structural reforms are a necessity, but as the de facto leader of the EU, overhauling trade or introducing widespread subsidies is unlikely. The country has made changes to introduce high-skill immigration from outside the EU, but sweeping reforms here are unlikely in a hot political environment.   Finding new export partners is another urgency for Germany. However, ING’s Brzeski doesn’t predict another country will expand like China did 20 years ago. Downside risks are more likely, including the potential for major import tariffs if Donald Trump is reelected as U.S. president this November.  Germany’s three-pronged coalition government is not well suited to enacting sweeping reforms owing to the dueling interests of the governing parties. The country has also seen growing popularity for parties on the left and right of the political spectrum.

There is a high risk that Germany wakes up too late, but it remains the largest economy in Europe. There is still relatively good infrastructure, so it still has the potential to be stronger 10 years from now than it is right now.

Factories in Bangladesh employing legions of workers to produce goods for export, at wages that are low by Western standards but relatively generous in local terms – the growth strategy dozens of countries have followed in recent decades. That model has more than tripled the size of Bangladesh’s economy, turning subsistence farmers into textile workers for brands from Adidas to Zara—what the World Bank calls one of the “greatest development stories” of our time.

Huq, who chairs the family-run Mohammadi Group, says that upon closer inspection, the seams of that model are fast coming undone. Several years ago, Huq installed hundreds of jacquard-weaving machines and other equipment from China and Germany, allowing her to cut 3,000 jobs, almost a third of her staff. Although those people eventually found work in other parts of the business, she worries about the future: As many as 80% of Bangladeshi factories planned to purchase automation equipment from 2023 to 2025, with each machine capable of displacing as many as six people, according to a study from researcher Shimmy Technologies Inc.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the World Trade Organization a few years later spurred a shift toward export-oriented manufacturing rather than tariff-protected local industry as the best path to sustainable development. The strategy lifted hundreds of millions from poverty in China and beyond, giving rise to a period of dramatic growth.

But that playbook is less and less able to generate the economic expansion poorer countries need to raise standards of living. As automation spread, the number of robots in factories worldwide jumped more than threefold from 2012 to 2022, with most of the growth in developing countries. Supply chains have fragmented as war tears through Ukraine and the Middle East. Post-pandemic inflation and higher interest rates have pushed Ethiopia, Pakistan and other heavily indebted nations toward default. And tensions between the US and China are reshuffling trade patterns and inspiring protectionist policies.

Manufacturing today makes up a smaller portion of global economic output than it did two decades ago. China accounts for about a third of today’s production of physical goods, and the next dozen countries—including the US, Japan, Mexico and Germany—are responsible for an additional 45% or so, leaving little room for places still looking for a way in. And even as China gets richer, it’s still focused on manufacturing and has done little to bolster consumption, so its 1.4 billion citizens are unlikely to buy more goods from other countries anytime soon. “The market isn’t what it used to be, and China got there first,” says Richard Baldwin, an economist at the IMD Business School in Switzerland.

No clear alternative has emerged for developing countries seeking to get rich. Those that are doing relatively well, like Romania, have combined advantages such as a sizable market and access to resources with low taxation and a diversified industrial base.

Of 85 less-developed countries Bloomberg Economics analyzed, almost three-quarters—economies with $25 trillion in output—are unlikely to further benefit from export-oriented manufacturing. Many of those are in Africa, particularly in places with low literacy, patchy electricity and poor governance. Those factors make the pivot to growth areas such as services difficult, meaning dozens of nations may simply be left behind. 

The pandemic, the inflation it triggered and the subsequent spike in interest rates have added to the difficulties. As investors slow their lending to emerging markets, even bright stars such as Sri Lanka have fallen into bankruptcy, prompting the World Bank to warn of a “lost decade.”

Emerging nations now carry public debt of $29 trillion, up from $12 trillion a decade ago, with more of them facing default and asking for bailouts from global lenders. Last year the International Monetary Fund approved about $5.7 billion of loans to poor countries, roughly four times its annual average before the pandemic.

Even as services jobs proliferate, the best ones tend to be in fields such as finance and tech, requiring skills that few people in developing nations have. As the global economy increasingly pivots away from manufacturing, many of the least developed countries will fall further behind.

As the global economy slows, a diversified approach to growth appears to be the winning ticket: some manufacturing, some services, some protectionist policies. Even then, the go-go economic expansion that propelled it will become increasingly rare.

Leading a global organization in today’s fragmented world is difficult—perhaps more difficult than ever.  There is a compounding and interconnected effect across all disruptions—and less and less time for leaders to react to them. According to the authors’ estimate that ten years ago, CEOs and top teams typically focused on four or five critical issues at any one point in time; today, the number is double that.

As the world grows more complicated, so must our perceptions of and approaches to leadership development. From the author’s work with leadership teams across companies, sectors, and regions around the world, as well as their own longitudinal research, they believe that six leadership traits are most needed to excel in today’s uncertain environment: Positive energy, personal balance, and inspiration; Servant and selfless leader; Continuous learning and humble mindset; Grit and resilience; Levity; and Stewardship.

Increasingly, the authors’ research and experience in the field suggest that organizations need to shift their leadership approaches in several core areas. Instead of managing with an eye solely on profits and preservation, leaders must also think about how to convey vision and possibilities (innovation) to all stakeholders. Instead of looking at value creation through the lens of scarcity and capitalizing on existing assets, leaders must consider opportunities to co-create with partners. Rather than simply command and control, leaders must collaborate and coach. And authenticity among leaders isn’t just nice to have; it’s expected by employees, customers, and almost everyone along the value chain.

Companies are still in the early stages of defining the craft of 21st-century leadership, but several best practices are emerging:  Engage—rigorously and relentlessly—with all key stakeholders; Enroll (and reenroll) the team; Build an operating model—and establish an operating cadence—that’s wired for speed; and Emphasize a culture of trust. 

When the authors ask CEOs and leadership teams about the biggest hurdles keeping them from achieving their aspirations and reaching their full potential, they cite talent and the leadership team on the field.  Some leadership skills can be taught in the classroom, but by and large, the most effective training and transfer of leadership skills happen on the job.  To address such issues, in the 1980s, former McKinsey global managing partner Ron Daniel coined the term “leadership factory” to describe just this dynamic—that is, colleagues investing their time in other colleagues, learning in situ, providing regular feedback, and sharing personal and collective insights, with the result of producing great leaders. The factory model that he envisioned some four decades ago is still successfully in place at McKinsey.  In their  work with global leaders and teams, the authors have observed several new additions to the factory model blueprint—guidance that leaders can use in their own leadership factories and leadership development curricula:  set leadership attributes; Don’t wait—get started now; Rethink how to build capabilities at scale; Lead self before others; and Empower leaders to build their own personalized, self-driven learning journeys.

The only certainty for today’s global leader is that things will remain uncertain. 2025 will likely be just as challenging as this year. So will 2026. It’s incumbent on leaders, then, to stop falling back on what’s worked for them in the past, adhering to business practices and rituals that have long since expired. Instead, they can collaborate with their teams, employees, and other key stakeholders to create the new rules of leadership.

Enhancing how a company supports and engages its employees can attract talent, improve retention, spur innovation, and increase customer satisfaction. The problem for many leaders is that when they ask what employees think, they don’t know what to do with what they hear—they often struggle to translate all this input into meaningful insights and concrete actions. A gap between accumulating the information and taking coherent action to respond can diminish the value of employee feedback over time—and if it persists, employees may stop responding.

The authors’ conversations revealed that companies—which together employ more than 2 million people across sectors including technology, financial services, and consumer goods—face seven common challenges. They also identified some innovative strategies for overcoming them. 

1. Making Sense of All That Data.  Paradoxically, the ease of acquiring data threatens its practical value.  Some companies have made more sense of their data by limiting who is authorized to launch new surveys or by constraining the variety of data-collection methods.  Other organizations have embraced a more localized process, trying to temper employee expectations for what each survey can yield. For instance, ‘managers’ feedback survey’.  How can companies acquire centralized insights without accumulating too much data? One solution, used by Microsoft, is to invest in specialized listening teams.
2. Making Sure Employees Feel Heard.  People won’t speak up if they don’t believe their input will be genuinely considered. Many HR executives we interviewed said that “survey fatigue” is a misnomer. Rather, employees experience “inaction fatigue,” and harnessing their voices requires a long-term investment in building and sustaining trust that their feedback will make a difference.
3. Identifying the Actual Underlying Problems.  Although employee surveys often make clear that something needs to change, companies may struggle to identify what lies beneath the feedback.
4. Protecting Employee Privacy.  Leaders face a dilemma with employee-listening programs: They want to ensure confidentiality, but they would benefit if they could follow up with specific employees to learn more about their responses. They consistently need to find out more—to do a more granular analysis of results across various locations, job types, demographics, and so on—without breaking the trust that employee privacy provides.
5. Navigating Conflicting Views.  Gathering feedback from numerous voices rarely results in unanimous agreement. Leaders often find broad differences regarding the best policy to construct or even the most vital issues to resolve.  In the authors’ research leaders commonly employed three elements in these tricky communications: acknowledging the lack of consensus, explaining the decision-making criteria, and demonstrating how various viewpoints influenced the final decision. 
6. Not Burying Bad News.  HR executives have a role to play in ensuring that bad news doesn’t get buried. They should educate leaders on the value of employee surveys and facilitate the translation of feedback into terms that align with strategic goals. 
7. Providing Meaningful Follow-up.  Leaders must also free up resources for middle managers and employees to take on new tasks and initiatives. Perhaps more demanding, leaders may need to shift other initiatives down on the priority list—or even let some go—to address issues that employees have identified as more pressing.  Equally important is communicating what has been done to the entire company.

It’s been said that we hire for competence and fire for character. Missing from the conversation is the recognition that what’s needed is a leader with strong character-based judgment. 

While managers often think that they hire for character, most have equated character with values fit. They’ve tended to give too much weight to character dimensions such as drive and accountability and too little to humility and temperance — which can result in bringing toxicity and weak judgment into the DNA of the organization. That often prompts individuals with strong character to either leave the organization or disengage. This is especially so when yet another high-profile promotion signals that the organization values a limited or unbalanced set of character behaviors.

There’s no doubt that hiring, firing, and promotion fundamentally shape the culture of an organization for better and worse. Simply put, organizational culture reflects the character of individuals within it. Therefore, attending to character is a real leverage point. Having worked with many organizations seeking to elevate character alongside competence in their HR practices, the author shares some key lessons.

1. Understand the Differences Between Competence and Character:  Many people think they are assessing character when considering candidates for hire or promotion because they assess some isolated elements of character, such as courage, along with traditional knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, this is a severely limited perspective: Research has shown that character comprises 11 interconnected dimensions, with an associated set of observable behaviors.  These dimensions are: transcendence, drive, collaboration, humility, humanity, integrity, temperance, justice, accountability and courage.  And character can be developed.  The critical point is to assess character comprehensively rather than simply naming a few qualities thought to be desirable in isolation.
2. Conducting Character Interviews.  Assessing character as part of the process of evaluating job candidates needs to occur separately from assessing competencies because it requires a more conversational approach than a typical interview. The following are the key considerations to keep in mind.  The following should be considere:  prepare for character interviews by developing your own character, Treat a character interview as a conversation, Understand that the interviewer’s character is revealed as well as the interviewee’s, use probing questions, observe the clusters of dimensions and their strengths and weaknesses, look for signs of strengths and weaknesses in interviewees’ stories, observe whether integrity and humility are on display, choose two to four interviewers, determine the overall strength of character development based on the interview, and provide feedback to the candidate after a character interview.  
3. Considering Character in Talent Development.  Assessing character in candidates new to an organization is surely important, such assessments are equally important when it comes to promoting individuals. In fact, promotions may send the stronger signal about what qualities the organization values, because the individuals being promoted are known to their colleagues, who have already formed opinions about their character based on their behavior.

Employees can often struggle when companies make big changes internally. Whether it’s a revamp of the company’s main tools and processes, changes in leadership or even a pivot in the company’s goal or strategy, changes like these can make employees uneasy, as they question how the changes will impact their day-to-day work or their security within the company.

Often, change is for the better, and putting forth thoughtful effort to remind employees of this and to reassure them is essential—but can be difficult to get right. Before communicating your big news to your team, consider the following advice on how internal comms pros can best manage employee morale during times like these, as recommended by the members of Forbes Communications Council.

1. Be Clear About What Employees Can Expect.  To manage employee morale during big changes, internal comms pros should focus on transparency. Clearly explain why changes are necessary and what to expect. This approach reduces fear of the unknown, preventing second-guessing and performance drops. Regular updates and open channels for feedback help maintain trust and keep employees engaged throughout the transition process.
2. Ensure Your Message Is Consistent.  Maintain consistent and clear messaging. Major changes can be tough, and inconsistent communication can make them harder. Internal communications teams play a key role in managing morale by providing a steady, reliable voice to ensure messaging remains uniform.
3. Find The Right Format For Communication.  Transparent communication is key to managing change effectively, with a focus on the “what” and the “why.” It’s critical to consider appropriate formats for each topic. An email is not always the ideal solution. Consider town halls, team meetings, talking points for managers, FAQ documents for technical matters, for example.
4. Use Positive Energy To Get People Excited.  Never underestimate the value of “hype” and positive energy to get people excited about change instead of fearing it. Change management is hard, but getting people to see the value and driving their motivation to want to be part of that change is ultimately what marketing is all about. Develop strong talking points, line up ambassadors to help and repeat those messages internally until they stick.
5. Emphasize The Bigger Picture.  One effective way to manage employee morale during significant internal changes is through clear communication, emphasizing the bigger picture. Internal comms can highlight the long-term benefits of the change, foster positivity and support self-care and confidence-building. This approach helps employees feel more secure and motivated, knowing they contribute positively.
6. Offer Something Tangible To Encourage Positivity.  While empathy and inclusivity matter, offering something tangible after internal changes boosts morale. Whether it’s new tools, bonuses or exciting events, timing these right after a change shifts focus from disruption to positivity.
7. Approach Communication With Empathy.  Approach any big change with empathy—you’re in it together to reach a better outcome.

The other advice are: 

Use Touchpoints To Focus On The Bright Spots.

Empower Managers And Other Leaders With Messaging.

Provide Opportunities For Two-Way Feedback

Ensure The Executive Team Plays A Key Role

Leverage A Holistic Change Management Strategy

Foster An Environment Of Open Communication

Customers are overloaded and overwhelmed by too much information, so making any decision is a challenge. You may think this is only important to your marketing and salespeople, but in reality, it doesn’t matter how great your product or technology might be, you won’t succeed if you don’t understand your target customer’s decision process. Every aspect of your business must be about sales.

Everyone on your team needs a regular update on the latest insights for salespeople, like the classic book Heart and Sell, by sales training expert Shari Levitin.  Levitin outlines 10 universal truths about selling, and the customer decision process, which the author believe, and which every business needs to address in their product, business model, and their whole customer experience. Just think of your business as the sales engine, rather than making it just about the sales reps.

1. Success requires continuous learning and improvement. No matter how certain you are that your solution perfectly matches customer needs, you will be wrong. Success requires a willingness to take responsibility for shortcomings, and the ability to better understand needs and to quickly learn and adapt. This is the growth equation for every business.
2. Emotions drive customer decision-making. Your ability as a business to uncover and capitalize on customers’ emotional motivators will dictate your success. That’s why Steve Jobs spent as much time on “insanely great design” as technology and marketed to customer emotions.
3. Every growth business must have a repeatable process. Just as good salespeople have a repeatable process they follow, every new venture has to overcome the chaos of a new business, put structure in place, document its processes, and focus on scaling the engine. Everyone on the team must adopt the same culture and recipe for success.
4. Resilience is the life skill of a business. Setbacks are inevitable, but good businesses and good salespeople always bounce back. Both should assume that no never means never. A good business leader gets stronger as he or she learns from each growth failure, and responds ever more effectively to customer needs and expectations.
5. Business brand trust begins with customer empathy. Empathy is about being fully engaged with your customers, through interactive social media, and taking the time to listen to real customers face-to-face. You have to demonstrate common ground and shared values with your customers over the entire customer experience.
6. Integrity matters in all aspects of a business. Your business has to demonstrate integrity, reliability, and competency, just like a good sales team member. Integrity means doing what you say you’re going to do as a business, being responsive to changing needs, and making the right kind of promises to your target customer segment.
7. Grow by helping customers rather than pushing a message. If you ask customers how you can help, you will uncover what matters most. This is more effective in directing their thinking and actions than selling technology. Well-crafted questions pull in customers. Good questions create change. Great questions can change the world.
8. Emotional commitment precedes economic commitment. Don’t try to create a sense of urgency by appealing to greed. Your business and your team need to understand and demonstrate how your product connects precisely to what motivates your customers. These days, that includes a memorable total experience and testimonials from friends.
9. Removing customer resistance takes persistence. All customers are prone to raising objections, because change is hard, there are many competitors, and decisions take time to make. As a new business attempting to grow, you need to be able to isolate tough customer objections, and adapt your solution or business model to eliminate them.
10. Looking for wrongs never makes you right. Every business owner struggling with business growth has the urge to blame it on a lack of funding, an economic downturn, or an unfair competitor. Instead, look for what has worked, and what you haven’t yet tried with your customers, to get it right. Focus on the real purpose that customers seek.

The world of content writing has evolved beyond just slapping words on a page and waiting for the Google gods to bless you with traffic. With Search Generative Experience (SGE) and other AI tools, the content landscape in 2024 has reached a new frontier where creativity must be combined with strategy, SEO has grown smarter and audiences are more discerning than ever.  So, let’s cut to the chase — if you’re not adapting your content strategy, you’re falling behind.  Here are the critical content writing trends you need to pay attention to if you want to dominate the market in 2024 and beyond.

1. AI-assisted writing: It’s here to stay — but you still need humans.  Brands leveraging AI without human oversight risk sounding robotic, detached, and boring. The key for 2024? AI should assist your writers, not replace them. Use AI for data-driven insights, topic ideation or first drafts, but always have a skilled human writer refining, adding personality and ensuring the piece resonates emotionally with your audience.  In short, AI is a tool, not a savior. Use it wisely.
2. Hyper-personalization is no longer optional.  In 2024 and beyond, “one-size-fits-all” content is dead. Audiences want content tailored to their specific needs, interests and even personal browsing habits. In fact, according to a report by McKinsey, 71% of consumers now expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And guess what? They get frustrated when that doesn’t happen.
3. SEO is smarter, so you need to be, too.  SEO isn’t the straightforward keyword-stuffing game it used to be. Google’s algorithms, including its integration with AI through the Search Generative Experience, now focus more on context, user intent and topical authority than just keywords.  This means writers can no longer rely on writing 1,000-word articles stuffed with keywords and expect to rank well. The future of SEO content writing is about quality over quantity. Writers need to focus on creating comprehensive, authoritative content that answers questions in depth and provides real value. Think topic clusters, internal linking strategies and long-form content that answers search queries from multiple angles.  Remember, your goal isn’t just to get the click; it’s to keep the reader engaged, build trust and position your brand as an expert in your industry.
4. Video and interactive content are king.  Writing is no longer limited to just blog posts and articles. Interactive content and video are becoming integral parts of content strategy.  91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and that number is expected to grow even further in 2024. Whether it’s video tutorials, webinars or product demos, these formats engage audiences in a way static content often can’t.  But don’t just stop at video. Interactive content — think quizzes, surveys, calculators and interactive infographics — can exponentially increase engagement and drive traffic.  Writers in 2024 need to think beyond words and start thinking in terms of engagement.
5. Authority and trustworthiness matter more than ever.  Trust is becoming a critical currency in the age of misinformation and AI-generated content. Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines are tightening, and the search engine is prioritizing content from verified, trustworthy sources. This means that authority-driven content — whether it’s interviews with experts, in-depth research pieces or case studies — will stand out more than ever.  Your content needs to prove that it’s backed by legitimate expertise. Including author bios, citations from credible sources and links to industry research will make a massive difference in your rankings and reader trust. Consumers are savvier today, and they can spot content that’s fluff or baseless. So, it’s critical to establish your brand as an authoritative voice in your niche.
6. Long-form content is making a comeback.  Long-form content has made a strong comeback. Google still rewards long-form, comprehensive guides and articles that provide in-depth value, and readers are still willing to spend time on content that solves their problems. According to research from Search Engine Journal, posts that are 2,500 words tend to perform best in terms of search engine rankings.  However, that doesn’t mean writing long content for the sake of word count. Your long-form pieces need to be well-researched, informative and packed with value. If your 3,000-word article doesn’t solve a reader’s problem, they’ll bounce, and Google will take notice.  So, if you’re going to write long-form content, make sure it’s worth the read.
7. Voice search and conversational content.  The rise of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant has changed how people search for information. Voice search is more conversational, and content needs to adapt. When users ask voice assistants a question, they expect direct, concise and clear answers.  Content writers need to think about conversational tone and long-tail keywords that mimic natural speech. This might mean writing more FAQs, creating concise answers at the top of your articles (to aim for featured snippets) and focusing on how your audience is asking questions out loud, not just typing them into a search bar.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. The world of content writing has evolved beyond just slapping words on a page and waiting for the Google gods to bless you with traffic. With Search Generative Experience (SGE) and other AI tools, the content landscape in 2024 has reached a new frontier where creativity must be combined with strategy, SEO has grown smarter and audiences are more discerning than ever.  If you’re not adapting your content strategy, you’re falling behind.  
2. 7 critical content writing trends you need to pay attention to if you want to dominate the market in 2024 and beyond: AI-assisted writing: It’s here to stay — but you still need humans; hyper-personalization is no longer optional, SEO is smarter, so you need to be, too; video and interactive content are king; authority and trustworthiness matter more than ever; long-form content is making a comeback; and voice search and conversational content.
3. Your content strategy is no longer just about keywords and clicks — it’s about engagement, authority and providing real value.