3 Content Marketing Trends You Should Be Following

In a world that’s almost hyper focused on online prospects, digital prowess and the number of likes on your social posts, keeping an eye on the latest content marketing trends for 2021 is the key to success for any business.

We’re ready to turn the page and start the next chapter, saying goodbye to 2020 and all it entailed. Of course, we’re taking new knowledge, lived experiences, unforeseen challenges and a lot more into 2021 with us; and it’s important that whatever your business or startup wants to achieve this year, you’re going to adapt to the customer landscape. 

Businesses and entrepreneurs have both seen significant changes in how they work and reach customers. Remote employment has now become the new normal. Companies with very little or no online presence have opened online stores and increased their digital marketing efforts to stay competitive.

With the internet becoming more available in the past few years, digital marketing has emerged as a significantly more cost-effective way to sell your business online via search engines, email, social media, and other channels. Content is at the core of any digital marketing plan. 

Attracting customers in the maelstrom of media is harder than ever. Cutting through the noise of competitors, sales, content creators and memorable branding is critical if you want to stand out to your audience. 

Here are 3 content marketing trends you should be following for 2021 to do just that:

Visual and Video Content

With popular platforms such as TikTok and Youtube taking over. Content needs to be more visual and interactive to keep consumers engaged. Consumers are currently watching more videos now than ever before. 

Everything from Instagram lives to 15-second TikTok videos will surpass traditional content. YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google, and users search for anything and everything on YouTube from football highlights to product reviews.

Making sure that your products or services are highlighted on these platforms will mean instant uplift to your reach; you might capture audiences that would have otherwise eluded your paid social targeting. 

Additionally, 83 percent of digitals marketers agree that video and visual content is growing more significant and generating a high return on investment, suggesting that more companies will begin to use video content as part of their online marketing efforts. So in order to stand out from the crowd, you need to follow the stream. High-quality video content is one of the most effective ways to snag your audience’s attention. 

Concentrate on formats like testimonial videos and user-generated content alongside a mix of quality material produced by videographers, and you’re bound to catch and hold your audience. 

E-A-T More

E-A-T is Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, another content marketing trend that you need to jump on. While this is not a new factor in boosting your customer experience and eventually conversion rates, Google has recently launched a number of algorithm updates that focus more and more on overall UX. 

Previous updates focused on mobile-first indexing, which changed the way that it crawled your website – prioritising how it performed on mobile devices. Google has recently changed the game again with an update that weighs heavily on the user experience on your website, with elements like page speed, dynamic content, on-page SEO and how long until the page is interactive at risk of seriously docking your website’s quality ranking if it doesn’t meet Google’s expectations.

This is something to consider when creating your content. The content that companies are publishing need to be authoritative, trustworthy and have some expertise behind. The more brands E-A-T, the higher the search engine ranks them.

However, you need to ensure that your content is optimised for fast loading, that it doesn’t slow down the usability of your site or compromise functionality at all. 

Ways you can show your E-A-T

• Create high quality, authoritative content for your landing pages
• Update your site regularly with dynamic content – whether that’s images or videos
• Link your Google reviews to your landing pages, or your SERPs
• Add credentials on your page: ‘about you’ pages, author pages.
• Having legitimate sources for supporting stats and facts, updating and optimising your website regularly with the latest information.

Repurposing Content

Repurposing content makes life easier, saves a lot of time, exposes you to new audiences, and improves your organic search results.

Essentially, this involves rearranging and redoing old content differently and breathing new life into it. It’s also a great way of showing development; you can even capitalise on messaging that’s worked well before and attract new audiences with this previously converting material. 

• You can change blog entries into a podcast or TikTok video. 
• Integrating and embedding YouTube videos into your blog
• Writing subtitles for your YouTube videos and posting them on other platforms
• Creating infographics from research and stats to make the content more visual.

Repurposing content also creates cohesion within your brand, without repetition – it allows you to retain elements of continuity in your branding while avoiding merely duplicating content. 

Cultivating a sense of reliability and consistent messaging is also one of the best ways to communicate your ethos with potential customers; by stating your USPs in multiple variations there is a sense of trust built up in the content that your customers consume. It pushes them along the conversion journey, and helps them understand what your business really stands for.

When developing your content marketing strategy, keep in mind the importance of creating high quality creative – regardless of the format. Your main goal should be to put polished content into the industry that adds value for your customers and demonstrates your USPs in a convincing way. 

Your content is usually the first thing that potential customers see when engaging with your business, so make sure you create an unforgettable first impression.