Content marketing attracts a target audience through relevant and valuable content. In the past decade, it has proved to be more efficient than traditional marketing. In today’s world, where there is plenty of content, you must write it with purpose, relevance, and meaning to your audience.

Content is still driving brand awareness, demand, and revenue when you do it right. However, writing articles alone is not enough because the way people consume content is evolving. We need to write other types of content. Take notice of these trends, which will shift the way businesses tackle content marketing in 2021.

Social media still rules

Social media is a dynamic platform and a force to reckon with. You can reach many people on social media at a low cost and communicate with a large audience interested in receiving content from you.

You can reach new relevant individuals who may even share your content with others. It also allows you to show behind the scenes stories, helping you craft strong brand-customer relationships, and will enable you to interact directly with customers.

Due to the advancements in technology, social commerce has come into the picture. Social commerce uses social networking websites to promote and sell products and services. Why? More than 50% of millennials would buy through social media, and it is estimated that in 2021, the global social commerce market will increase by about 34%.

The benefit of social commerce for buyers is that it shortens the consumers’ journey of researching, finding, evaluating, comparing, and purchasing products from different online platforms.

Is any social media capable of social commerce? Instagram and Facebook are. They allow users to buy your products without leaving the app. They click on the Checkout button and proceed to payment. Soon, other social media networks may join this bandwagon.

Go viral on video

Video is easy to consume. People must click on a YouTube thumbnail and then let the video play. YouTube is the second most visited website after Google. Meanwhile, TikTok is growing. Instagram is also growing its video broadcasting capabilities with IGTV and Stories. Video content is likely to go viral faster than text.

Conduct more live streams – Live video streams are on the list of effective digital marketing trends for 2021 and have become popular because of technological advances. Live stream helps businesses to connect with their consumers and in real-time.

It makes for natural conversations between businesses and consumers. They can be in Q&A forms where people ask questions, and you respond. You can also organize events, presentations, announcements, etc.

Choose your time slot wisely so that your audience have an opportune time to engage with you.

Bank on user-generated content 

User-generated content is not new, but it is here to stay. 79% of consumers find user-generated content to be more influential than brand content going into 2021. Determine what inspires your customers to share content for your marketing campaign. 

The benefits are manifold. It lets the customers or the audience generate content for companies, allowing them to show products and services more authentically and reward brand fans by featuring them on the company’s social media channels. 

GoPro sources its users’ photos and videos from their customers worldwide and shares them using Instagram, showing GoPro’s capabilities. It also engages with its customers and makes them happy to see their work featured on GoPro.

Get into the podcast bandwagon

Podcasts have been increasingly becoming popular in the recent decade, turning out to be widely regarded and useful. People listen to podcasts while commuting, housekeeping, cooking, or doing household chores.

Podcasts can be just about anything: your startup journey, books, entertainment, startup news, books, or about any event. 49% of the people listen to podcasts while they are at home and 22% while in their car.

Research shows that podcast listeners are loyal, affluent, and educated. While 56% of listeners are men, 44% are women. Product companies can reach these people through podcasts.

They have the potential to provide massive brand visibility to your company and engage your customer base. But you must create meaningful and valuable content that resonates with your audience and meet your brand objectives. 

Creating dynamic content

Dynamic content is a web page or email component that changes according to the customers’ preferences, behaviors, buying habits, etc. Marketing agencies do this using data they collect from customers.

Texts and pictures vary depending on the customer segmentation, resulting in a more personalized experience for the customer, making customer interaction more interactive and engaging. The key feature of dynamic content is that it can suggest products and services that customers may be interested in and offers other direct recommendations.

Optimize for voice search

Thanks to the advancements, putting voice into searches is possible. People have been increasingly using voice search. With over one billion voice searches, there is a lot of optimization that can be done by brands.

While creating content, people must use simple language and then read their content loud. They must consider how people speak and how we would formulate questions, and then use these sentences throughout text and titles.

Increased adoption of AI and machine generated content

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will alter the game in several industries. James Chadwick of Pencil says that you input rules and data with classical programming and systems, and you get answers. With ML, you input data and solutions, and it learns the rules.

OpenAI’s GP3 is capable of writing decent quality content at scale. While it doesn’t put out high-quality content, SEO spammers will start adopting it massively to produce content. Brands are already using ML and AI, but high-quality writing is still not possible for your brand to be at the top of your industry.

Creating more valuable content

What machines can do, humans can do better. Blog writing is not going anywhere. However, the SEO landscape is clogged right now. Sure SEO makes a company reach #1 on Google, but Google will be looking at a depth of expertise from now.

Organizations that will cover a topic in-depth will own the traffic for related queries. Since Google emphasizes Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness (EAT), showcase how well you know a topic by publishing long-form content. Collaborate with subject matter experts to create and repurpose content into other formats as Moz does.

Besides, people will also not share their emails if the content is mediocre. Brands must showcase their value immediately. Offer practical suggestions and show that you can solve their problems. It should have original research giving you deep insights into what industry professionals and startups are doing.

After creating an in-depth article, atomize it. Take one piece of in-depth content and then break it into smaller pieces. There is nothing new to say, but people like repurposed content that talks about the topic in a different light. 

So, use the chapters in your ebook or whitepaper and turn it into a separate blog piece, podcast, or video. Content production will be a focus as we advance. 

So there you have it. 2021 will be full of stiff competition, but you can stay on edge and glide through by being up to date. What other content marketing trends do you think of in 2021?

If you need help creating great content for your brand, Owlspire can offer content marketing services tailored to your marketing needs. Have a look at what we are offering or get in touch with us.